Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

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dragonx47
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Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by dragonx47 »

I'm not totally sure if this is the right forum to post this question in.

In any case, our school recently hosted a tournament and posted stats for it. After they'd been posted for a couple of days, a student contacted me stating that she had been marked for a neg during a certain round, when it had in fact been her teammate that negged. When I dug up the scoresheet for that round, however, it had her marked down as having negged, and not her teammate.

Although I am inclined to believe her, at the same time it seems like this could easily be abused. Additionally, at the end of the each round, each team was asked verbally if they accepted the final score, and invited to sign off on the scoresheet, although the teams appear to have left before signing off for the match in question. I was wondering if in general there is a rule/convention that if a team leaves the room and proceeds to the next round, that that indicates it has chosen to accept the results indicated on the scoresheet. I was also wondering what other tournament directors have done in similar situations.
Last edited by dragonx47 on Wed Nov 16, 2016 6:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

If you look at post-tournament discussion threads on this forum, there are often one or two people asking for corrections. Moderators and stats people are fallible creatures who often make mistakes.

My attitude is: if you care so much about your personal statistics that you are willing to expend the energy to send an email or make a post asking for a correction, you need to rethink your life. Personal stats are not that important. However, if you as a TD have been asked to make a minor correction, and have literal proof that the correction should be made, but you don't want to because of some weird estoppel argument based on a premise that in no way reflects the reality of how tournaments are conducted, you too should rethink your life.
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by t-bar »

Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:and have literal proof that the correction should be made
If I'm reading right it's actually the opposite situation here--the scorekeeper's record of the game disagrees with what the player is saying, so the OP's quandary is based on a conflict of evidence rather than a reluctance to change the stats.

I think it's up to you. As a player, I certainly wouldn't expect a stats change for something as minor as a single neg. On the other hand, scorekeeping errors can and do happen. This is a pretty small correction to ask for, too--it doesn't change the game score, for example, or the team's bonus conersion.
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by Cody »

My policy (and a common policy among statskeepers) is that the scoresheet has the final say.

This is not to say that scorekeepers don't make mistakes, or that you can't correct mistakes that the scoresheet does not corroborate. But I would want some independent corroboration from a teammate.
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

dragonx47 wrote:Additionally, at the end of the each round, each team was asked verbally if they accepted the final score, and invited to sign off on the scoresheet, although the teams appear to have left before signing off for the match in question.
This particular feature has been used on occasion at tournament I've moderated or coached; in every case, the signers did their due diligence in agreeing with the final score, but I've never seen a coach look over the individual stats to be sure they agreed with those as well. (Caveat: a lot of those games with required signatures were at Masonic Sectionals & State, where individual stats aren't kept anyway.) So, I wouldn't use this rule as a grounds for denying the change. (Not that you're saying you are, of course.)

I agree with Cody - if I were TDing and statskeeping for a tournament and had this particular situation come up, I'd leave the scoresheet as-is, unless the teammate also e-mailed, I suppose. In general, because it's a very minor stats fix, "leaving as-is" isn't going to ruin anyone's day. If this got into "the final score was wrong and the win/loss outcome needs to change" territory, then we're talking about e-mailing coaches & the moderator to figure it out.
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by Antrobus63 »

I have a stats-related tournament etiquette/procedure question. If a tournament host runs an NAQT tournament on Neg 5, is it their responsibility to get all of the stats uploaded to NAQT in a manner that's acceptable to NAQT? We were at a well-run tournament this year where the Neg 5 stats looked fine but are still "Pending" on NAQT's site. After a week, I wrote the TD about it, who didn't seem to know the procedure ("Not sure exactly how Neg5 translates to them putting up stats."), so I wrote back with the standard NAQT instruction: "If you are the tournament director, please send the necessary files to NAQT at [email protected]."

After a few more weeks with the stats still Pending on the official NAQT stats page, I wrote NAQT. They replied, "We are waiting for the hosts to correct errata." I wrote the TD again, who said: "We corrected all we could. We told them. Never heard back. Stats are on Neg5. Why is this so important?"

So, my questions are:

- Is this normal? Is it acceptable? For my own NAQT-packet tournaments, people wanted to see stats right away. Also, NAQT asked us to clarify a few things, which we did; in the end it took us several days to straighten everything out, but I never questioned the premise that getting the stats straight for NAQT was part of my job.

- Am I in the wrong, as a coach who had a team at this tournament, to query the TD and NAQT about the stats if they are still Pending after several weeks? This isn't a question about a single neg or one game, but about the tournament status as a whole. Where do you all think this falls in the spectrum between "Get a life" to "Providing final stats for the QB community is very important." I have been involved with QB for four years now... and every time I think I understand standard practice... I find that I really don't.

- The status is still Pending, but it's not my tournament--so what happens? Do the stats stay Pending forever? Do people (NAQT, Fred M, whoever) finally just accept the Neg 5 stats as is?
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by jonah »

Antrobus63 wrote:After a few more weeks with the stats still Pending on the official NAQT stats page, I wrote NAQT. They replied, "We are waiting for the hosts to correct errata." I wrote the TD again, who said: "We corrected all we could. We told them. Never heard back. Stats are on Neg5. Why is this so important?"
I have one question outstanding to the TD which he has not, in fact, answered. Namely, the Neg5 results show a tie in round 11 between Kellenberg A and St. Joseph A, and since ties in mainstream non-Texas quiz bowl are highly unusual and that result wasn't present the first time they sent us stats, I want to verify whether it is correct.

These are NAQT's results-reporting guidelines.
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by Antrobus63 »

Antrobus63 wrote:
After a few more weeks with the stats still Pending on the official NAQT stats page, I wrote NAQT. They replied, "We are waiting for the hosts to correct errata." I wrote the TD again, who said: "We corrected all we could. We told them. Never heard back. Stats are on Neg5. Why is this so important?"
have one question outstanding to the TD which he has not, in fact, answered. Namely, the Neg5 results show a tie in round 11 between Kellenberg A and St. Joseph A, and since ties in mainstream non-Texas quiz bowl are highly unusual and that result wasn't present the first time they sent us stats, I want to verify whether it is correct.
Yep, that sure sounds like a real issue to me, but this TD (a nice person, in general) considers my stats questions an intrusion, so I'm not going to write him again about this. I hope it gets straightened out but, to any QB people reading this, is it appropriate for a coach to inquire about Pending status for a tournament his team has attended?
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by Golran »

For me, if stats are available in one spot but not another, I'd want there to be some reason that you're asking beyond "I just want to see them in the other spot". If no stats are being posted at all, or this issue is affecting nationals qualifications, funding, writeups in the local paper then absolutely raise :capybara: , but if you're not going to do anything with the new location for the stats that you wouldn't just as easily do with the old, I'd just let it be.
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by Antrobus63 »

For me, if stats are available in one spot but not another, I'd want there to be some reason that you're asking beyond "I just want to see them in the other spot". If no stats are being posted at all, or this issue is affecting nationals qualifications, funding, writeups in the local paper then absolutely raise :capybara: , but if you're not going to do anything with the new location for the stats that you wouldn't just as easily do with the old, I'd just let it be.
My reasons are (1) as a coach, I want to be sure our team and individual stats for this tournament are find-able and official (if they're not up on NAQT's site or hdwhite.org, will people see them?), and (2) as a father, my son put up some numbers that would figure among the all-time best performances. If the stats don't get finalized at NAQT, will they disappear into the ether?

But should I have to justify any of this? When I first got into QB, I felt sheepish about inquiring about my kid's stats if they weren't posted. But my experience since then has been that a lot of QB people care about stats; it's been a while since I had to ask about them because TD's seem to always get them up within a week or so. I thought that getting stats straight with NAQT was a required part of my job as the host of a NAQT event.
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by Abdon Ubidia »

Antrobus63 wrote:I thought that getting stats straight with NAQT was a required part of my job as the host of a NAQT event.
While I agree with you that the host should correct any errors in their stats and that it's common practice to send those stats to NAQT, FWIW the fact that the link Jonah posted offers a $50 discount for reporting stats to NAQT implies that it is an optional part of running a tournament on NAQT questions. The TD may be violating some unwritten rules, but he isn't violating any written ones.
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Re: Contesting Statistics After a Tournament

Post by Ethnic history of the Vilnius region »

Antrobus63 wrote:Antrobus63 wrote:
After a few more weeks with the stats still Pending on the official NAQT stats page, I wrote NAQT. They replied, "We are waiting for the hosts to correct errata." I wrote the TD again, who said: "We corrected all we could. We told them. Never heard back. Stats are on Neg5. Why is this so important?"
have one question outstanding to the TD which he has not, in fact, answered. Namely, the Neg5 results show a tie in round 11 between Kellenberg A and St. Joseph A, and since ties in mainstream non-Texas quiz bowl are highly unusual and that result wasn't present the first time they sent us stats, I want to verify whether it is correct.
Yep, that sure sounds like a real issue to me, but this TD (a nice person, in general) considers my stats questions an intrusion, so I'm not going to write him again about this. I hope it gets straightened out but, to any QB people reading this, is it appropriate for a coach to inquire about Pending status for a tournament his team has attended?
A TD should put a premium on making sure that questions from coaches and players are addressed, before and after the tournament. As a frequent TD, I lean towards the "there are no stupid questions" school of thought, so I don't think that simply asking questions of the TD regarding his/her tournament is in any way rude or inappropriate per se. And in this case, it sounds like your concerns (stats being official, accurate, and in the right place) are quite valid.
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