Hi All,
After a very long delay, the Unofficial GCA Top 100 is finally out! I would like to say a quick thank you to:
-Ran for letting me conduct this experiment (I would like to stress again that this is not sponsored by GCA nor is it an official GCA project)
-Tom Doak for coming up with a comprehensive list of courses
-Jonathan Cummings for his amazing statistics work
-And to everyone who nominated courses, voted on them, and gave suggestions for the format of the experiment.
A quick review of the process:We began with a list of nearly 400 courses for Top 100 consideration. From there, GCA members nominated courses to be added to the ballot (two votes were required for a course to make the ballot). From there we arrived at a list of 412 courses that could be considered for the top 100 in the world. Members then voted on each course they had played using the Doak Scale.
-There were 177 valid voters
-There were 8403 valid votes
-Raters had played an average of 47 courses on the list
-Each course was rated on average 20 times
-The average rating was 6.9
The lists:Two Top 100 lists have been created, so you may choose the one that suits your opinion. The first contains "raw" rankings. Courses are ranked simply by the average vote. However, only courses with 10 or more votes are included.
Raw rankings (courses with 10 or more votes included):The second list was adjusted by Jonathan to give experienced voters more weight, guard against raters who consistently rated too low or too high, and discard outliers (Jonathan can explain this all much better than I can). Here is Jonathan's summary of the process:
"Matrix ranked by avg (highest-to-lowest)
Courses with less than 10 votes deleted
Only rater votes within +/-2SD of the overall course average included
Bias Adjustments: Delete Raters with less than 30 votes and |SD|>1; Adjust Raters with more than 30 votes and |SD|>1 by rater/overall average differences
Courses with less than 10 votes again deleted"
Adjusted rankings:Feel free to discuss which method you prefer, as well as any comments you have on the lists. Thanks again for your participation.
**EDIT**
You can download a spreadsheet with all the basic stats here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ojoy0mn1yzjHere is a snapshot of the full raw rankings (all eligible courses):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/ian8389/GCA/Raw_All.jpgAnd the full adjusted rankings:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/ian8389/GCA/Raw_All.jpgNote: see important message on reply #86 (page 3) regarding these "full" rankings.