Rating update question

[rusch_bag]

Basically, I am wondering why the ratings only update once every two months or so. I can't imagine you go through to make all of the ratings official on the day before the update so why can't you update the ratings after you finish making the results official each weekend? I have no idea what the process is to do it or anything, I just don't see how updating it more often though would be that much of an issue. Insight me please. Also, what exactly happens to the ratings when they go from unofficial to official?

[mark12b]

Here's how it used to work, at least:

http://discgolfreview.com/forums/viewto ... 88#p110588

[Chuck Kennedy]

You only get unofficial ratings if the TD posts the results. The PDGA knows nothing specific about the events until the TD sends in the TD report anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to a few months after the event. Gentry processes the reports getting the info needed by TD HQ (like PDGA memberships) then sends all of the stripped Excel files to Roger Smith. Roger imports the data into the database and sends me the Excel files, anywhere from 100-225 each update, to process the course layouts by division which is semi automated. However, there are all kinds of issues that come up, sometimes with TDs messing with the Excel files so formulas are messed up or columns or rows deleted or courses or division assignments to courses left out. For tee time rounds, we sometimes break out the ratings by divisons and see if there are changes over the day.

There are always new courses and especially temp course layouts that have to be entered into the database before the divisions can be assigned for each round. Once that is completed, the updated database with the course layouts goes back to Roger and he crunches the ratings which can take up to 12 hours on a fast processor. Various errors are flagged - not enough propagators, ratings out of line for a division like a rec woman shooting a 1020 round - which we review and attempt to correct, sometimes needing to contact the TDs involved. Roger then reruns the ratings overnight and then any errors are checked again. We usually end up with two or three passes before we are satisfied with the run. Gentry posts the database on the development server for us to take a look how it will look online. Then usually Monday morning of the update week Gentry will post the ratings on the main PDGA server.

I'm not sure the whole process can ever be fully automated because the TDs won't be able to do things like know how to enter the temp courses. They are still challenged to get the TD reports correct as it is and not forget things. So some human oversight will be required to process the ratings. It takes just as long to crunch the ratings whether 10 events or 100 events are added since it has to look at every player record in the update. Even if we could do the ratings more often, we don't plan to do them more often because at this time there isn't enough new information on average to do so. The average PDGA player plays one new 2-round event about every 6-7 weeks over the year. We update 8 times per year now. There are more players playing and more events but the amount that any player plays in sanctioned events per year hasn't changed. All that doing ratings more frequently would do is to introduce more statistical chatter in the ratings that doesn't indicate what's really happening to a player's rating. It's as bad as trying to see which way the stock market is going by reacting to changes each day rather than viewing more data over time.

[rusch_bag]

Thank you for your response.

[Dag]

Last year was my first year of competition. Over the course of the year I played twenty-some rated rounds.

All properly reported PDGA events for the past 12 months are included in a player’s ratings calculation.

My first two rounds last year were on March 6th. On my player ratings detail these rounds are listed as included in my ratings calculation even though they are greater than 12 months old with ratings having been updated after the expiration of that 12 month period (March 29th). Shouldn't those rounds have been dropped from the calculation?

I'm not concerned about this, just curious if I've understood the system correctly.

[Chuck Kennedy]

It's not 12 months from the date of the ratings update but 12 months back from the date of each player's most recently rated round.

[Frank Delicious]

However, there are all kinds of issues that come up, sometimes with TDs messing with the Excel files so formulas are messed up or columns or rows deleted or courses or division assignments to courses left out. .

You should really lock the spreadsheets down to keep this stuff from happening. We have a spreadsheet at my work that we provide to clients to help them calculate various things with term life and we lock it down pretty good so the client can really only enter data into certain cells. Before we did that, clients would always be deleting rows or modifying formulas.