bmlvu97

A couple of points here, especially seeing that I was on the team that put together the 2013 Nationals in Springfield.


1) A lot of the time, the host chapters are just happy that we have enough judges. Yes, there are always new judges, and everyone has a bit of different knowledge. Most of us are experts on our cars, whether it be performance, full sized, or modern era. At many times, we are asked to judge cars that are out of our expertise - the meet head judge does the best s/he can with the people and experience that they have. The judges, need to realize their strengths and weaknesses - for example - you will never see me judge an engine.


2) The reason why the chapters do not hand out the judging sheets until later (usually mailed), is that they have to be photocopied for recordkeeping - I know that when we hosted in Springfield we had most everything photocopied and mailed out within 2 weeks.


3) At some times, the judging to too easy - this year my car got 960 points - there is no way in hell my car is a 960 point car. Last year I got 970+. 900-925, I would give you. It is the human factor that plays a big role in everything.


It comes down to this - is our judging system a perfect system - not by a long shot. We do the best we can with what we have and are always looking for ways to improve it. We have a new Head Judge who, with the OCA judging committee, is always looking for ideas. Personally, I would love to see a Judges Resource room with 4-6 "experts in certain eras (for example, Performance, pre-1960, Hurst, etc.) that the judges can go to if there are questions whether or not something is correct. There are a lot of phenomenal cars out there, some that are so damn close that, at times, you have to be nit picky, especially in the performance and Senior classes.


Brian

jaunty75

I'm sorry, but what you have just described is the very definition of judging the cars against each other.

You have only one BOC award to give out, and you have to choose among more than one car. How do you do it? Not by drawing numbers out of a hat. Not by doing eeny meeny miney moe. Not by flipping coins. You do it by comparing the scores the cars received and choosing the highest one. In other words, you're using the scores the cars received to judge them against each other.

That's what "best" means. By definition, to choose the best in a group of anything, whether it's the best apple pie at the county fair, the best of breed at a dog show, or the best car in a certain class at a car show, requires comparing them to each other (or judging them against one another, to use the language of car shows).

Yes, as you say, the points each car earned were based on a separate standard. But then points were compared to each other (in other words, used to judge the cars relative to each other), and the car with the highest point total was selected as the best. Comparing the point totals the cars earned and choosing the highest is the same thing as comparing the cars that earned those points and choosing the best.

rustyroger

A class may have two A+ students, but if one scores 99% in an exam, the other gets 98%, guess who is top of the class?.


Roger.

MDchanic

No, because, presumably, if they both got 998 points, they would both win Best of Class.

- Eric

jaunty75

You're still wrong. You STILL have to compare the scores. There's no getting around this. Comparing the scores is the same as comparing the cars that earned those scores.

In your case, both cars would get a BOC because both, when compared to each other (or judged against each other), were deemed to be identical because their scores were identical. But you're still judging them against each other.

When you're selecting one from amongst a group, you're comparing them to each other. If it ends up a tie, fine. You selected two (or however many tied for BOC) because they were judged to be equal. They were still judged against each other to end up in that tie.

MDchanic

Well, one of us is wrong, anyway (hint: It's not me).

To use the classroom grade analogy:
As you may recall, generally in non-science disciplines, students are graded individually, without regard to their peers (I'm not counting "grade inflation" and other bugbears now); the teacher / professor devises a certain grading scheme (each quiz is 5%, each homework is 1%, midterm is 25%, final is 50%, let's say) and applies it to each student's work, regardless of what the other students do. If only one student gets to 98%, then only that one student gets a 98% grade. If eight students all get to 98%, though, they all get 98% grades, because they are not being compared to one another, but rather to an objective standard, which was articulated before the class began.

Often in science and mathematical disciplines, though, students are explicitly pitted against one another through the use of curving. In a curved grade system, a mathematical formula is applied to each test, and to the final grade, which takes into account the highest grade, the lowest grade, the grade distribution width, and the number of students, and distributes them onto a Gaussian curve, which assumes that most students will be "average," whilst very few will do exceptionally well or exceptionally badly, and so exaggerates the differences between the latter, in addition to "normalizing " them to a "normal" proportion of Passes and Fails. Generally, curved grades are transliterated into letter grades, so that initially, you may have had 25 people with grades in the 90s, say 2 with 98s, 4 with 97s, etc. If these grades were left "raw," all of the students with 97s and 98s would earn As, but once the grades are curved, the 97s are now A- material, or even B+, even though they would have made an A before. This is grading in comparison to other students.

Another way to look at it: Class rankings. Some schools will provide rank positions for all students in the class, and these numbers must be non-repeating consecutive integers. If two people have identical numerical grades, then one must be somehow chosen to have the higher number, and one the lower. Other schools do not rank their students, and so they stand on their grades alone.

The same applies to car show judging, of course: If every car that showed up was a 995 point car, they would all have to get the same award.
If, on the other hand, the judges decided that giving everyone the same award wasn't feasible, they would go out determined to find tiny differences in quality between the cars, and the cars would then, in fact, be judged against one another, instead of against an objective standard.

- Eric

jaunty75

Hint: yes it is.

None of what you've said has any relevance.

The point is really very simple. It can be summed up in one sentence:

To choose from among a group based on any kind of criteria requires making a comparison.

Unless you're drawing numbers out of a hat, drawing cards out of a deck, flipping coins, or any other random selection process, you are, as I've said several times now, by definition making a comparison.

Whether it's choosing the best of class amongst several cars in a certain class at a car show, the best student in the class based on class ranking (which is how the valedictorian is chosen--again by making a comparison of GPA's and choosing the highest), or the best dog at the dog show, you cannot avoid the fact that you are judging these cars, people, or dogs against each other.

jaunty75

There is no difference between these two processes. Both involve comparing the cars against each other. By going out and looking at the cars who all got the same high score to try to find differences among them in order to determine a single best of class, you're doing exactly what you did to arrive at their scores in the first place. You're just using a different objective standard because the first time around, the standard used was not fine enough to make a distinction between the cars. By using this new standard, you, in effect, came up with new scores for the two cars which are now different, and chose the higher one to determine the best of class.

In other words, all you did to settle the tie between the two cars is to do over what you did the first time, you just used a different objective standard.


Here's a simpler analogy. You have five people, and you want to assign one of them the title of "tallest." How do you do this? You go out and measure the heights of all five and choose the highest number. Bingo, you've just compared them.

You did NOT compare them when you actually measured their heights as you were just assigning them each a number based on an objective standard: where the top of their heads lined up against the yardstick. But you then DID compare them, by comparing the numbers you obtained from that yardstick in each case, choosing the largest number, and calling the person who has that number the tallest.

What if two people had the same height, as measured by the system used, and you didn't want to just say that there was a tie for tallest person but rather wanted to distinguish between them to come up with a true tallest person? You can do what you did to choose between the two show cars that had the same high score. You can go out and measure their heights again, only this time use a more precise yardstick. Use one that measures to the nearest tenth of an inch instead of nearest inch or half-inch. In doing so, you'll assign the two people NEW numbers based on your new objective standard, and then choose the larger number as the tallest person.

By going out and looking at the two cars again to look for, as you put it, "tiny differences," you are just using a new yardstick, or a new objective judging standard. You're using one that has the ability to measure those tiny differences whereas before you were using one that did not.

Tedd Thompson

GEEZ guys, the way it works is the highest scoring car gets the BOC the next gets a first award and many others who scored with in a range of that number will also get a first award. Then on down to to second places and third. In all the time I played the game I have never seen two cars have the same BOC score, maybe it happens at the judging end of it but never have I seen two BOC's at the podium after it was all over. Behind the scenes I'm sure if a decision needed to be made some judge or judges could do a walk a round and find a point someone has missed. I know if I judged my car honestly I wound be lucky to get a third, things just get missed.... Tedd

jaunty75

No one disagrees with this, and it's not what we've been talking about. The question is when are cars being compared TO EACH OTHER, and when are they not.

They are not being compared to each other when their score is obtained. That's done using an outside, presumably objective standard. They ARE being compared to each other when those scores are then used to determine a best of class.

Koda

Right. It seems that the car is scored against a standard, then the aggregate total
is scored against another's aggregate total only for best of class. They can both be first place with a certain amount of points achieved. It seems that the cars compete against themselves, but the best individual score will be compared in total to the others and get best of class.

MDchanic

All true, but that's not what I said.

Perhaps the crux of the disagreement is that I am unaware of how antique auto judging and awards are actually performed, as I have never been (and will never be) involved in it. From the stated description of cars being judged individually based on an objective 1,000 point scale, there is no question that they are not being judged against one another. Logically, if they are judged solely against a set of objective criteria which leads to the assignment of a specific numeric score, then if two cars both have the same highest score, then both must receive the same award (as, in some high schools, if two students earn equal highest GPAs, there will be two valedictorians).

If you are postulating that only one car can earn the award, in spite of two cars having the same highest score, then, yes, clearly they are being judged against one another. If this is the case, though, then they are not being judged solely against a set of objective criteria, which was the original suggestion, and the original suggestion is therefore a happy populist fig leaf covering the cruel elitist truth.

- Eric

jaunty75

This still isn't quite right. The moment you try to select a best of class, you are judging them against each other, even if it ends up a tie. All that means is that, in judging them against each other, they were found to be equal, at least by the criteria in effect at that time. Just like you could find two people to be the same height based on the precision of the measuring instrument you're using.

If you want to make a distinction between the two cars tied for #1, then you have to change your judging criteria. Which means that you are throwing out everything you did before and starting the process over again with a new objective standard, a finer comb if you will, one which you presume WILL result in the two cars getting different scores, and then you'll choose the higher score and declare that car #1.

If you want to make a distinction between the two people who are supposedly the same height, you measure them over again using a more precise instrument which presumably will find a slight difference in their heights that the first instrument you used couldn't detect.

MDchanic

BUT, if you have decided that your judging criteria are sound, and you do not change them, then you have two (or more) cars that have a "highest" score, and both must win the award.

If you are changing your judging criteria after the fact, then you are not, in fact, judging the cars against an external objective standard.
It's like having a trial, having the jury find the defendant innocent, and then having the judge say, "I think he's guilty anyway," and sentence him.

- Eric

jaunty75

Correct. The cars were compared, by comparing their scores, and found to be identical

Yes you are. It's just a new standard. You may not think of it that way, but that is what you are doing. You're not changing it "after the fact". You're just changing it because you want a standard that WILL distinguish between the two cars because the first standard wasn't able to do so.

You may say to yourself, when re-examining the two cars after both earned the same number of points, something like "aha, this car has a scratch in the paint on the decklid that the other car doesn't, so that car is better and is therefore BOC." But this is just semantics. What you are really doing is using a new judging standard that was able to detect that scratch that the previous standard could not. (Maybe you used a magnifying glass this time but not the first time.)

Or you could say that the there was an error in judging the cars the first time as that scratch should have been caught but wasn't. In this case, you're rejudging them using the same standard and just doing a better job of it.

In all of these cases, you are doing the same things. You are first comparing each car to an objective standard to come up with a score, and then you are comparing the scores to come up with the best of class. If there is a tie for the top score, you have two choices. Accept this and declare that there are two or however many BOC cars. Or, change the standard to one that will result in different scores for these cars, and then choose the highest-scoring car based on those new scores.

TK-65

2009 OCAs judges walked the line, judged the cars. They had a top three and went back to judge those cars against one another. I was one of them and was told this by the lead judge of my class. Thats how they came to a decision on BOC.

Bottom line is that the system is extremely flawed, and you are better off knowing that going in. The OCA nationals are a great event and one more people should support. I always read that someone went to a local show and no Oldsmobiles were there. The OCA Nationals is an event that is ALL Oldsmobile. But for some reason people poopoo it because of judging. Just go and have a good time being around people that love the same cars that you do.

MDchanic

That settles it. Cars are explicitly judged against one another, rather than against an objective standard, in order to produce one single award winner.

There is no point to further argument, as the argument is all theoretical, and the practice is not the same as the theory.

- Eric