DRT wrote:Glenn E. wrote:DRT wrote:I would suggest that a fair scoring system would be 4 points for gold, 2 for silver and 1 for bronze.
3-2-1 is more normal, which results in the following (provided I didn't mess up the math, which I did in my head):
Glenn, I was working on the basis that a Gold is worth at least twice what a Silver is and a Silver twice the value of a Bronze. Now that you have the spreadsheet, does it make a difference if you use 4:2:1 rather than 3:2:1?
It's not unusual to have a weighted scoring system like this. Formula 1 is a prime example.
Spreadsheet? What spreadsheet? I did that by hand in the post window.
Just eyeballing the table, though, says that there would probably only be one other move - South Korea would pass France - but I think that's it. Great Britain would widen its lead over Australia, but has no hope of catching Russia. Germany would close the gap with Australia, but wouldn't quite catch up.
The weighted systems I have used typically aren't weighted for a mere 3 entries. Doing so basically makes any result other than 1st place meaningless, so there's not much point in doing it. Just rank based on 1st place finishes and be done with it.
Some other examples:
The green jersey competition in the Tour de France is weighted, rewarding the first 25 riders in each flat sprint stage. First place is "only" 35 compared to 30, then 26, 24, etc. Other stages reward fewer riders and award fewer points. The King of the Mountains point system is also weighted, but is even more confusing due to the categories of the climbs. Though, notably, category 4 climbs reward the first 3 climbers and award 3-2-1 points.
Formula 1's system rewards the first 6 drivers and is weighted 10-6-4-3-2-1. That's an extremely "win biased" system, but even there 1st place isn't awarded double the points of 2nd place. (Though it's as close as any system I'm familiar with.) Nascar's system is designed to reward consistency more than it rewards winning, and while there are bonus points awarded for various things 1st place is worth 185 points, 2nd is 170, 3rd is 165, etc. down to 43rd receiving 34 points.
I used to run multiplayer computer game tournaments in which the top 8 competitors received points, and after experimenting for some time with different algorithms finally settled on 9-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 as sufficiently rewarding first place without making it the overriding factor in the tournament. The next most workable system was 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1, but the problem that caused was that finishing below 4th in any round basically put you out of the competition. We also felt that finishing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in three rounds should be marginally - but only marginally - better than finishing 2nd, 2nd, and 2nd.