Scoring System
Understand how points, levels, and competitor progression work.
Relative Placement
Relative Placement is a scoring system which provides a fair method to value each judge’s subjective vote.
It makes sure that every judge has an equal vote on the end result — no judge has more power than the other.
Consequently, one high or low judge is disregarded and favoritism or bias from a judge is avoided.
Judges
A minimum of five judges are required, with a maximum of nine.
In the preliminary and semi-final rounds, an even or odd number of judges may be used: five, six, seven, eight or nine.
In Jack & Jill competitions, half of the judges may judge leaders, and the other half followers.
A final round of a competition must be judged by an odd number of judges : at least five, recommended seven, preferred nine.
Preliminary Round, Semi-Finals and Finals
In the preliminary round and, if needed, in the semi-finals, the competitors (single, couple or group) are not ranked in a specific order. A call-back system is used instead.
The judges select competitors for the next round (essentially yes or no) and determine alternates
The scorer (usually the head judge) transforms the selections into ordinals: 1 for selected competitors, 2 for alternates, and 3 for unselected.
According to the total number of 1s, 2s and 3s received, the competitors are ranked.
The head judge determines how many competitors are promoted to the next round. There are two possibilities:
• A pre-fixed number of semi-finalists or finalists
• Considering the natural break in the ranking (often it occurs that the first group of ranked competitors are close together before there's a break to the second group)
Final Placements
In the finals, all the competitors (usually couples or groups) are placed by the judges by defining a rank: 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc. Duplicate placements are not allowed.
For the final placement, a majority is needed. If no competitor has a majority of the same placement, the next placement is added to the previous placements until a majority is reached:
• 1st and 2nd place (= 1-2)
• 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (= 1-3)
• etc.
If two or more competitors have an equal majority, the numerical value of the ordinals for each competitor is added. The competitor with the lower sum is ranked higher.
If the sums are still equal, the next placement is added to the previous placements.
Example 1
| Competitor Number | Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Judge 4 | Judge 5 | 1-1 | 1-2 | 1-3 | 1-4 | 1-5 | 1-6 | Final Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | |||||
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ||||
| 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | - | 1 | 5 | 3 | |||
| 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 4 | - | 1 | 2 | 5 | 4 | ||
| 5 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 5 | |
| 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | - | - | - | - | - | 5 | 6 |
In this example, the result is clear for all competitors. With five judges, the majority required is three.
• Although Judge 2 placed Competitor #1 in fifth place, a majority of three judges placed them in first, so the final placement is first.
• Competitor #2 received one first-place vote and two second-place votes. So 1-1 equals 1, and 1-2 (1st plus 2nd) equals 3.
• Competitor #3 received no first-place votes, one second-place vote, and four third-place votes. So 1-1 equals 0, 1-2 equals 1, and 1-3 (1st plus 2nd plus 3rd) equals five.
Example 2
| Competitor Number | Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Judge 4 | Judge 5 | 1-1 | 1-2 | 1-3 | 1-4 | 1-5 | 1-6 | Final Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | |||||
| 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 (5) | 3 (5) | 3 (5) | 5 | 2 | |
| 3 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 (5) | 3 (5) | 3 (5) | 4 | 3 | |
| 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 6 | - | - | 4 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 4 | - | - | - | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | - | - | - | - | 3 | 6 |
In this example, we have a more complicated situation. The majority required is still three.
• For Competitor #1, the result is clear: the majority of judges voted them in first place.
• Competitors #2 and #3 both reached the majority of three for second place. Now we sum the ordinals: 1+2+2 = 5 (shown in parentheses) for both competitors, resulting in a tie.
• The same procedure is repeated until a majority is reached. In this example, the difference appears eventually at 1-5.
• Competitor #4 received more votes in 1-3 than #2 and #3, but fewer in 1-2, so the final placement is fourth.