The traditional evaluation of the Championship event of the year, which has been a highlight at the Global Dressage Forum since many years, will this time be based on a statistical analysis of dressage results of the 2009 European Championships in Windsor by scientist and dressage fan David Stickland. Stickland is a Senior Research Physicist of Princeton University, based at CERN in Switzerland. He studied the scores of the judges in Windsor and will give his conclusions at the Forum on Tuesday 27 October 2009
David Stickland wrote a number of reports for the FEI showing how judging was working throughout the year and at the 2008 Olympics. The emphasis at that time was on seeing if it was possible to use this data to identify those judges who were more or less consistent with their colleagues over a longer period of time. His analyses can encourage the best ones and can be helpful in finding ways to give additional training to those who were less consistent.
The challenge is to make subjective judging as objective as possible. During the Global Dressage Forum judges, riders and trainers will evaluate the strengths and defaults of the current judging system and Stickland will show that statistical analysis of figure by figure scores and of final results. This can in fact throw light on the judging process and can be used to improve judging. Science can assist Art.
Stickland will compare the myths about judging with the facts and the international panel will discuss solutions that could enable the results to be more precise, to rank riders more effectively and ensure that the sport is measured as objectively as possible going into the 21st century.
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