Debate Ratings - 2016-17 Final

The final ratings for the 2016-17 season have been posted.

Congratulations to everybody on a great season!  In particular, congrats to Rutgers for their incredible performances at CEDA and the NDT, and also to Harvard for their ridiculous consistency on the way to the Copeland Award.  More than that, however, congratulations to every debater that suited up and made it to a tournament.  I was fortunate enough to catch a bunch of fantastic debates this year.  I have been consistently excited by the quality of important and provocative scholarship that I have had the great fortune to witness being explored by so many of you.

This is the last set of ratings for the season.  At some point during the summer, I will try to take stock of the current state of the ratings.  Feel free to contact me directly if you have questions, concerns, or suggestions.  I try to be as transparent and forthcoming as possible.

As usual, disclaimers:

1. These are not my personal opinions.  The algorithm is set and runs autonomously from how I may personally feel about teams.  I do not put my finger on the scale.
2. The ratings are determined by nothing more than the head to head outcome of debate rounds.  No preconceptions about which schools or debaters are good, no weighting for perceived quality of tournaments, no eye test adjustments.  If you beat somebody, your rating goes up and theirs goes down.  If you beat somebody with a much higher rating, it goes up more.  If you beat them in elims, it will go up by more than if you do so in prelims.  That's it.

For a sense of what the ratings number actually means:

• A 1 point ratings advantage translates roughly into 5:4 expected odds,
• 2 points is about 3:2
• 3 points is about 2:1
• 4 points is about 3:1
• 5 points is about 4:1
• 8 points is about 9:1