Personal Handicapping at Island Barn
Link to the current list of handicaps.
How we arrived at the numbers.
The numbers are calculated from a spreadsheet that takes account of results since last summer. Each band gets a slighly increased PY number. The best estimates are provided from races where we have the times, but we also get results from fleet races.
Timed Races
The corrected time for each competitor is calculated as a percentage of the winners corrected time in each race. Then the percentage finishing time is averaged across all the races each sailor completed. The bands reflect the percentage differences, so a Sailor in Band 1 has their PY number increased by the amount that would reflect a finishing position in band zero. For sailors with plenty a decent number of results this system is pretty well statistically founded, and I have good confidence in it. If we have only a few results for some sailors then its much more likley that good days or bad days have skewed the results.
Untimed Races.
Where we have only finishing positions for races things are a little less well founded statistically. Rather than being based to time within a fleet the places are converted into percentages and treated similarly. Races with fewer than 4 finishers are excluded. I was a bit worried about this as a technique, but in practice the calculated bands for sailors that we have plenty of results for in both timed and untimed races correlate pretty well - better than I'd feared, and it enables us to get figures for a lot more sailors.
If you don't agree with your band
First look at the number of finishes that your ranking is based on. If its based on only a few races then it won't be especially reliable, so we'll be glad to receive any evidence you can give us to justify a change. Point us at some past series where you know you completed a lot of races for instance. If on the other hand your result is based on a lot of finishes then you'll need to produce some pretty convincing evidence as to why it should be wrong.
If you haven't got a ranking at all
We need some evidence from you urgently as to what you're ranking should be. If you are new to the club then let us know about open meeting or Nationals results. We may decide to give you a provisional banding and change it restrospectively when there's more evidence.
In Band 0 would be sailors who expect to finish at least in the top quarter of National fleets, and maybe a bit higher at local open meetings. In Band 1 would be top half finishers. Band three would be folk who would be pleased with a mid fleet finish at a championships. Band 4 would be folk who are perhaps still getting to grips with racing their boat and so on. Band five would be beginners, or those who aren't too bothered about taking it all too seriously, and are out racing because its more fun than sailing round aimlessly. Folks who get enough stress at work and aren't interested in heavy competition.
What does it take to win
Like any other series, the most important thing to do is to do plenty of races. If you don't do at least half the races, which is what is required to avoid counting DNC (did not compete) results in your score, you wll not do well, no matter how well you sail the rest of the races. The more races you do then the more good scores you have, and the more less good scores can be dropped from the results. If all works as designed series should be won by the sailors who are improving their results most, so if you can find time to do the odd training event and practice techniques it will all help.
Additional Download
If you are interested you can also download the full data in a rather large MS Excel spreadsheet to see how we calculate the figures. Unfortunately the spreadsheet won't work in very old or very recent versions of Excel because it makes considerable use of Excel Visual Basic Macros. Excel 97 and Excel 2000 are known to be OK.
