3A QUALIFIERS and their Z-SCORES

ALL 3A TEAMS AT SECTIONALS, RANKED BY SCORE

First let’s look at the classic list of all teams that danced at sectionals and how their scores rank. This doesn’t have that much usefulness since we have five different sectionals and four different sets of judges. For better or worse, it seems to be a popular, shorthand way of comparing apples to…I dunno, maybe sushi?

State qualifiers are starred, and the effect is bolder on this PDF:

ALL 3A TEAMS RANKED BY SCORE

ALL 3A TEAMS AT SECTIONALS, RANKED BY Z-SCORE

Z-scores are the closest we can get to overcoming the fact that there are five sectionals and four sets of judges.

Everyone knows that you can’t really compare scores coming from different sectionals and different judges. One very imperfect way of getting around that is to figure out a team’s z-score for their sectional.  Basically, you take the raw scores that a set of judges handed out at a sectional and think of that set of scores as a snapshot into those judges’ collective mindset. What did they think was average? What kind of score did they give to a dance that just killed it?

The not-fun math involves figuring out the average score and the standard deviation for each sectional. Crunch, crunch, crunch, and out comes a unique z-score for each routine. Again, it takes into account the unique curve of each set of sectionals: how far a dance is from the average of that set, measured in standard deviations. Pretty geeky and definitely like using duct tape to fix that old car in your neighbor’s driveway…

But it helps sort out our apples-to-sushi problem: we can make rough comparisons of dances even though they come from five sectionals and four sets of judges.

Let’s say that team A and team B both got 3rd place and around an 88.20 at different sectionals. But let’s also say that team A has a higher z-score than team B. What does it mean? It’s possible to say that team A impressed the judges more than team B impressed their own judges.

ALL 3A TEAMS RANKED BY THEIR SECTIONAL Z-SCORE

3A QUALIFIERS RANKED BY SCORE

Let’s repeat the process just looking at the qualifiers. First up it’s the classic scores list:

3A QUALIFIERS RANKED BY SCORE

3A QUALIFIERS RANKED BY Z-SCORE AT THEIR SECTIONAL

And here are your qualifiers ranked by the z-score they got at their own sectional:

3A QUALIFIERS RANKED BY Z-SCORE

ILLINOIS DANCERS

Sectionals Day!

1.24.20

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DANCERS EVERYWHERE

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