Quote from: Roebird37 on Mar 20, 2016, 06:08AMDave, I don't know what to say, I checked the predictions and results and was totally confused at the discrepancy for your band. I wasn't there, I didn't hear a note of it, but all the reports from those attending seemed just as flummoxed.
I'm really sorry, it must be so hard for your band to accept, and even more so that it's probably knackered your points for promotion next year.
Many people get antsy about being drawn 1st or 2nd, do the stats bear it out? I try not to think about it, but we were drawn 16th this time, and that cheered a lot of our band up.
The only trouble with it was that unbeknown to us the organisers had decided to try and whip through the bands as quickly as possible, and missed a planned break, as they hoped to start the next section early.
Most of us turned up an hour earlier than we expected to play, only to discover the band before us were being called to registration. Two of our cornets and our MD were AWOL and the desperate attempts to track them down, along with the vision of our MD getting changed in the carpark of his hotel because he didn't have time to check in to his room, will not easily be forgotten.
Oh dear!
No harm done, at least. I can think of a few similar occurrences - contesting seems to bring this kind of thing out... When she was in Scotland, Diane's band once took the stage at an entertainment contest after a bus breakdown running straight from the bus with half the band not in uniform at a contest with a 'dress and deportment' prize...
Regarding stats about draw correlating with position - there is something to it, and indeed
www.4barsrest.com published an article a number of years ago correlating the two for the whole British Open history, which goes back to 1853. I can't find it right now, but it's probably still out there online if anyone has better luck with Google than me. Basically, if we assume that performance standard is independent of where drawn (which seems both reasonable and hard to test other than by what we're already doing...) there is over all adjudicators an effect, but not a large one on average - though I cannot right now recall the exact size of it. 1 is not the least favourable draw in a large field - 2 and 3 are both more likely to unluckily lose out, and as I recall, anywhere in the last quarter or so is about equally most favourable. But it's not a be-all-end-all effect on average - one can usually have some confidence that performing well early on will receive a just (or at least not too unjust) reward. What hasn't been done to my knowledge is to break the stats down by adjudicator - I would intuitively expect there to be some adjudicators that turn out to have a much greater draw bias than others.
Quote from: patrickosmith on Mar 20, 2016, 07:52AMI know something about statistics. If you get me the placement outcomes / rankings and the draw order over the last 10 to 20 years, I can analyze the data to see if there is a correlation (a bias against the earlier draws).
So, as mentioned above, something along these lines has been done, if you can find it. In fact, I've been meaning to look into it in greater depth myself for years, but never quite finding the time. Maybe this can be the spur. But have at it - I recommend
the BrassBandResults web site (which I do quite a bit for) as having by a long way the most comprehensive data out there.
Quote from: Geordie on Mar 20, 2016, 11:31AMPlayed in the Northumberland Miner's Gala many years ago, when we had coal mines. Adjudicator was very positive in the written remarks about our Soprano Cornet. Great. Except we did not have one .....
Ha!
Reminds of a story once told me by a player at Aldbourne band about their bass trombone winning the best instrumentalist prize at a contest many years ago on a day when they'd played without a bass trombone...
Quote from: Roebird37 on Mar 21, 2016, 03:31AMReally, that tells us all we need to know about brass band contests. No point taking any of it to heart.
One does one's best, doesn't one... But we put in so much effort to the preparation that it's impossible to avoid some degree of emotional investment - and of course one wants to able to celebrate the good results, which is hard to do if one genuinely doesn't let any of it through one's shell - it's ultimately some degree of emotional exposure that makes it a meaningful thing to do. And then the results dictate how easy or otherwise it is to recruit new players, and also the level of technical interest of the music that we get set to play the next time.
I've been contesting for quite a long time now (that isn't even a complete list!), and the hard caring of youth has long dissipated into a kind of 'well, this is the game, let's play it' attitude. A result like this one doesn't make me rend my clothes and wail, it makes me wonder whether all the effort we made was a sensible investment of our time. To which the answer is obviously - surely not, it never was, and we knew this when we got into it, but the game usually makes it feel more worthwhile than this... Plus of course that the thrill of getting a musical performance by a bunch of amateurs genuinely technically polished is a very satisfying thing. But next week's another story, and of course we continue. First rehearsal back tonight, and perhaps we can burn effigies of those adjudicators that were so hard to impress for us but not for some others...
.
. Cornets out of tune 
, players forgot to mute 
and the percussion section got lost 
. Thoroughly depressing. We came 13th/18. 
Already 
