Part one of this series of blog entries presented one reasonable approach to scoring ARDF competitions. Part two described a way to adjust competitor scores to make them apple-to-apple comparable from one event to the next. Part three examines how the adjusted scores might be brought together to provide a meaningful ranking system for USA ARDF athletes.
The goal of creating a ranking system is to display competitors’ names by order of their overall ARDF performance over some period of time. That is, their names should be ordered 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. based on how well they performed in recent ARDF competitions. Certain standards and criteria need to be applied in order to determine who gets ranked, and how their rank is determined. This post examines what some of those standards and criteria might be. It is not meant to impose any particular set of standards, but rather to present one approach that can serve as a starting point for discussion.
A competitor’s rank is just one criterion that might be used when selecting team members. Being highly ranked does not guarantee that a competitor will receive an invitation to join the team. Conversely, not being listed among the rankings does not mean that an individual won’t be selected for team membership. The team selection subcommittee is free to utilize all reasonable criteria to ensure that the team selection process is fair and equitable. Rankings are just one tool they may use to assist with the team selection process.
Who To Rank
A ranking system should not attempt to include every individual who has ever played the sport. It is fitting that only those who have demonstrated a certain mastery of the sport be included in the rankings. So the proposed system selects those individuals who meet the basic requirements.
Since the rankings are for USA competitors, it seems fitting that only those who might qualify for USA team membership be included. The USA ARDF Rules currently describe the basic requirements as follows:
Competitors eligible for USA ARDF Champion shall be citizens of the USA, Green Card holders, or have lived in the USA for the previous year and shall not have competed for the title of Champion in any other country.
USA RULES FOR AMATEUR RADIO DIRECTION FINDING Version 9-Feb-2020
Recent competitive ARDF experience is also an important criterion. Having met the basic requirements for team membership, ranked competitors also need to have competed in at least one recent ARRL-sanctioned ARDF event, and to have demonstrated a minimum level of mastery of the sport.
A suggested definition for a recent competition is an ARRL-sanctioned ARDF competition held during the two most recent calendar years in which ARRL-sanctioned events were held. Usually, that will be competitions held during the current year and the previous year. But COVID-19 demonstrated that there might be years in which no ARRL-sanctioned ARDF events are held.
As a minimum level of ARDF mastery, the suggested measure is this: in at least one recent sanctioned competition the competitor must have successfully located all assigned transmitters and registered at the finish before the time limit expired. In other words, they successfully completed at least one course. One might ask, “Why not rank everyone who didn’t OT?” There are two main reasons why assigning a rank to an individual should require a higher minimum standard: 1) It gives greater significance to the achievement of attaining ranked status, and 2) It may not be feasible to calculate an accurate rank for all who participated.
Expanding on the second point: consider that in a 5-transmitter M21 Classic competition a 5-fox minimum requirement results in just one possible combination of foxes and only one permutation that must be selected as the optimum order. But for those who find only four out of five foxes, there are five different combinations of foxes that must be analyzed to identify the one permutation that is the optimum order. If three out of five foxes are found then there are ten different fox combinations and ten more optimum permutations that must be analyzed. For two out of five foxes there are again ten combinations and permutations to be analyzed. And if only one fox is found there are five combinations. That means that there is potentially 5 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 30 times as much ranking analysis required if “not going OT” is used as a minimum ranking requirement in a five-fox competition. And that is just for the M21 category. When there are few competitors this will be a manageable problem, but clearly, setting too low a bar does not allow the ranking system to scale.
Remember that being ranked is not a prerequisite for being selected for Team USA. So not being ranked need not exclude any qualified individual from making the team. The Team Selection Subcommittee has latitude to take into account other factors, including extenuating circumstances when extending invitations for team membership. So, as a practical matter, restricting the number of those ranked, and having the team-selection process consider unranked individuals using a non-analytical methodology is the most reasonable approach.
Calculating Rankings
A competitor who meets all the criteria described above will have their rank calculated and listed in the rankings tables. Separate rankings will be calculated for each competition format: Classic 80m, Classic 2m, Sprint, and Foxoring. Within each format rankings table, the competitors will be ranked separately by age/gender category.
All qualifying competitors are eligible to receive up to four separate rankings: one for each competition format. Those rankings will be made relative to all other qualifying competitors in their age/gender category.
A competitor’s adjusted competition scores (see Part 2) will be used for determining rank. Only the highest event score achieved during a calendar year will be considered. (This will ensure there is no disincentive to participate in multiple events annually.) The highest score from both recent years will be averaged to determine a competitor’s ranking score. If the competitor only participated during one recent calendar year, then that year’s highest score will be the competitor’s ranking score. A competitor with a higher ranking score will be ranked above any competitor with a lower ranking score. Tied competitors will both receive the same rank, with the next lower rank(s) left vacant.
If a competitor lacks results from recent competitions because he/she helped conduct a sanctioned event, then their rankings will be calculated using the two most recent years for which they have qualifying results, going back up to four years.
Discussion
No ranking system is perfect. The one described above is no exception. But it does have simplicity working in its favor. The formulae it uses are simple, provably stable, and give predictable results. The entire system can be written in a short Javascript program and rendered on any browser. The results, and the source code, can be shared freely so that competitors and organizers can analyze it and improve upon it.