Statistical Sleuthing by Leveraging Human Nature: A Study of Olympic Figure Skating

John W. (Jay) Emerson
Department of Statistics
Yale University

ABSTRACT:
Analysis of figure skating scoring is notoriously difficult under the new Code of Points (CoP) scoring system, created following the judging scandal of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. The CoP involves the selection of a random subpanel of judges; scores from other judges are reported but not used. An attempt to repeat the methods of previous studies establishing the presence of nationalistic bias in CoP scoring failed to recreate the competition scores from the raw scoring sheets. This raised the concern that different subpanels of judges were being selected for each skater (breaking ISU rules). However, it is also possible that the ISU was attempting to further reduce transparency in the system by permuting, separately for each skater, the order of the presentation of scores from the judging panel. This talk will investigate these and other aspects of Olympic judging of both figure skating and diving.