Here is a quote from Wayne Channon's article in Eurodressage from earlier this year. He is discussing the accuracy of awarding scores for dressage competition and I think he has some very good points.
"...I asked a mathematician at Imperial College, London, to give his view on our current system. His view was extremely interesting.
"He analysed our current scoring system and pointed out a possible perverse result of integer scoring. Take two horses, Horse A is a 6.4 mover for all 36 moves and Horse B is a 5.7 mover for 34 moves and a 6.6 mover for the other two.
"Clearly, horse A is the better horse of the two and should score more highly. However, when you work out their score for a Grand Prix test, the result is amazing:
* Horse A scores 6.4 at all 36 moves and hence is awarded a mark of 6 for every move and gets an average of 6.0 or 60%. Horse B scores 5.7 at 34 moves and 6.6 at the two remaining moves which happen to have a coefficient of two. The judges would award 34 times the mark 6 and twice the mark 7. The average is 6.083 which amount to a total mark of 60.83%
* So Horse B would win by 0.83%
* If the precision of the individual scores would be decimal, then the correct scores would be Horse A 64% and Horse B 57.75%. This is the problem with integer scoring!"
For the whole piece go to
http://www.eurodressage.com/editor/wayne/20080118_halfpoints-sequal...
I think it is about time the dressage scoring system was reviewed, and I am surprised this issue has not been discussed more. We owe it to ourselves to make the marking system clearer.
Here is another point made by Wayne, which really made me think:
"It does not only affect the riders at the top of the sport it has just as big an effect on the everyday dressage competitor.
"For example, take a rider that achieved a solid 62% to 64% all year. Over the winter she makes considerable improvement only to find that she is still “rewarded” with 62% to 63%! How can this be?
"To understand this, we have to look at how judges judge according to the current marking system. Take a normal horse, ie one that has basic paces for a 6 or a 7 or somewhere in between. Few have movement for a 5 or less or for more than a 7. So when a judge looks at a combination they start on a “this is a 6 or a 7 trot or canter” and move up or down on how well each movement is performed.
"Now look a little more closely at what happens. Let’s say that the horse has a trot for a 6.4 – or 64%. With the current system, all of its marks will start on a 6 – yes, 60% – it has to be rounded down to a 6! If it moved for a 6.6 (only 2% better) it would start on a 7 or 70%. A 10% difference!!!"
http://www.eurodressage.com/editor/wayne/20071112_halfpoints.html
It is utterly mindblowing that the FEI has not acted on this already.