Debate Ratings - Winter 2018

Ratings for the second semester have been updated. They reflect the entire 2017-18 regular season. It has been a really interesting season, and congratulations to everybody!

I will emphasize that to get the most insight from the ratings, one should not dwell too much on the ordinal ranking of teams. Attention to the often minimal difference in team rating will often show that teams separated several ranks are in fact expected to be functionally at 50/50 odds in a head to head matchup. Sometimes these very small differences can be as much due to the randomness of their draws or differences in travel schedule as anything else.

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

Reminders about the ratings:

1. If you feel strongly that you belong on this list but don't see your name, it may be possible that this is due to the ratings not having enough data on you.  The deviation for your rating has to be below 2.0 to be listed (which roughly amounts to around 24 rounds). 
2. 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.
3. 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.  If you want all the gory details, follow the link given below.
4. For a more detailed description of how the ratings are calculated, there are a number of posts in the archives that explain the process.  In particular, this post will be helpful.