I can not find a mathematical scenario which correlates to some sort of formula (edit: gender neutral formula)……I'll defer to you on this one as your math is likely better than mine but the old 1 spot plus (in this case 59) doesn't work.

I'm focusing specifically on F30-34 at 2 spots with 83 athletes and F40-44 and 45-49 with 85 athletes and 3 spots…..

Unless you have a different starting point allocation (between sexes) for the one spot per AG (females at 461/19 = 1st spot at 24 or less then plus 59)

Males at first 38 athletes one spot then plus 59.

Females at first 24 athletes then plus 59, this solves the math on the F30-34 vs F40-44 (83 vs 85)

….Not wanting to get into an equality debate, just trying to figure out the math.

Maurice

Forget the 22. Let's just allocate the 28.

Take the # starters / 1663 for each ag. Truncate the fractional component, so 3.9 slots = 3 slots. You have 19 of the 28 given away and 9 left to be divvied out somehow. Take the 9 highest fractional components and give those 9 away.

In this case, the two AGs with 85 have the 8th and 9th highest fractional components. So, they get one of those last 9. The AG with 83 slots has the 11th highest fractional component and does not.

The fact that this is totally the mathematically wrong way to deal with non-discrete slots is irrelevant. It is how WTC deals with it.

You can play with their calculator here and see the integer, remainder, and ranks that go into it. Formulas are pretty simple and are in cells C3 to G3
https://docs.google.com/...VME/edit?usp=sharing

You can alter the slots available in A1 and the starters per AG in B3 to B28.

And, what's interesting in this case would be the scenario if there had been 51 slots to give instead of 50, as the F35-39 and F40-44, each of which have 85 starters, would have had equal claim to that 51st and final slot. So, what does WTC do in that case? Boxing match on the podium? Coin toss? Pick one and hope no one notices? Come up with a 52nd slot?

It woud be interesting but let's say F35-39 and F40-44 are equally entitled to that next slot, then in the hypothetical case that the F40-44 person beat the F35-39 athlete then it would be good to give it to the F40-44....if he F35-39 beat the F40-44 athlete (which she should) then the answer is not so clear cut...back to coin toss I guess, or maybe which athlete was closer to the winner of her age group in percent.

I don't think it's up to us to figure out a policy for WTC. They should have an answer for how they handle the scenario.

Here's another one I'd like an explanation for. Take 2015 CDA's participation numbers but pretend there were 44 slots to give away. F50-54 gets 2. But, if there were 45 slots that AG only gets 1. So, add a slot to the pool and an AG actually loses a slot. Explain that one to me, WTC.

So bush league to get such a simple thing that they are trying to do wrong.

They don't have to explain anything to you....................

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

Actually, I think you're mistaken. Despite your constant drumbeat of WTC support, I think they owe me, and everyone who cares about triathlon world championships, an explanation for how it is that the only transparency they provide as to how it is they determine to allocate their slots is a little slip of paper taped to a wall at every awards ceremony. The fact that this is all they expose makes clear they don't want people knowing. And, the reason is they don't want people knowing that it's not very proportional like they claim and they don't want people discovering things like the 2nd place woman in 50-54 AG who gets to go to Kona if there are 44 total slots available but does not if there are 45. Kind of tough to explain to an AG how it is that their slots decrease when the total available to the race increases, so best that people just don't know.

Go ahead with your constant refrain of defending WTC from the slowtwitch mobs, but this is math. And their math sucks. And it impacts who gets to go to Kona.

Here's their calculator. Play with it. Have fun justifying the cases like where an AG gets fewer slots as more total slots come available.

https://docs.google.com/...NJMunp7VMYb5VME/edit

Hey, lighten up, Francis!!!!

I guess I should have used pink so that you would have known I was just joking around with you.

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

Roger that. You are just so consistently vehement in your defense of WTC under any criticism, that I assumed this was yet another case of it. I believe the defense of "it's their game and they can run it however they want" is a valid defense for much of the criticism WTC receives (entry fees, tacit acceptance of drafting, etc...), but when it comes to simply doing some simple math properly, I find that defense weak. And, that's what I assumed you were saying.

It is so simple and they willingly piss off 50% of the customers in the M35-54 age groups who make up the majority of the participants in most races.

You know, I was thinking about this.....they should just make is 25 slots men 25 slots women and then allocate inside each proportionally. They are already pissing off the bulk of their 30-54 year old customers, so why not go all out. Right now they say it is proportional, but it gets "more equalized" in favour of low participant loaded women age groups. I say, if you are going to trend that way anyway, then heck go all out or stop the shenanigans and go actual proportional.

OR....only winners get slots...everyone else put them in a pool of the WTC points race and allocated those truly proportionally based on global percents per age group and only base this on IM finishes for your BEST IM....not points for guys doing 3 IM's etc. Then everyone gets slotted in overall globally based on the points they got relative to the say the top 3 in the age group (don't give out points as a percent of age group winner, give out points based on the average of the top 3....in which case the 1st guy would get slightly above 5000 pts, second would be very close to 5000 and third would be slightly under....then everyone is proportional in that race based on that average number). Now line all the guys from all races up at the end of July and send email invites out. You get 48 hours to decide, if you don't it rolls to the next in line globally.

The current slot allocation at races makes no sense.

What you will see is that age groups like 35-49 will return to their true slot allocation.

OR .....just make it half and half men and women and stop the hypocracy.

As we discussed at 125 slot races this proportional system largely worked out. At 100 it still worked. at 75 it starts falling apart. At 50 it is truly broken. At 30 slots, don't even claim proportionality. I was toying with IM Taiwan this spring, but with 30 slots and having gone to Taiwan 5 times, it was not worth it. I basically had to win my age group in a country I keep going to. I chose IM South Africa, first because I had never been there and at 75 slots and the threat of age groupers getting dope tested, I felt like I had an outside chance and a slightly better bike which is in my abilities and I could have been in the mix.....at 50 slots, no chance. At 30, I have to win. I can't win 50-54 in any race....just too many fast guys who are a league above.

Spoon wrote:

It is so simple and they willingly piss off 50% of the customers in the M35-54 age groups who make up the majority of the participants in most races.

Yeah, I'm not so sure to be honest. There are two different issues with WTC's allocation.

1. They claim proportionality, but in reality it is partially an equal distribution and partially a proportional distribution. In the CDA case, 22 slots are equally distributed and 28 are proportionally distributed. They could have an algorithm that distributes far more proportionally and still meets the criteria of every AG getting at least one.
2. They simply do the proportional distribution math wrong. Plain and simple. No ifs, ands, or buts. It's a buggy implementation.

Now, #1 might piss off the M35-54 because they are the ones who are losing slots because of the hybrid equal/proportional rather than a pure proportional implementation. But, the hybrid implementation may be yielding exactly the Kona field that WTC wants, and probably most M35-54 would agree that giving some of their slots to the lesser populated AGs is not a terrible thing. WTC should just come out and say that this is exactly how they want it, instead of claiming that AGs have a proportional allocation as Messick just did recently.


#2 is relatively minor and most people are unaware of it. In any given race their buggy math is unlikely to impact your AG. But, as shown above with the example of F50-54 losing a slot when the total available goes up, the fact that WTC does not know how to do math can and does impact the slot allocation so people are benefitting and others losing simply because of bad math, but they do not know it.

I think you want to believe that some conspiracy exists that really doesn't. My theory is that it is an archaic spreadsheet that they use to determine the slot allocation. It probably isn't as sophisticated as it should be and that is now evident since most races have much fewer slots than just a few years ago. At 100 or more slots the imperfections weren't so noticeable. Now that many races have only 30-50, it is glaringly obvious that there is bad math.

Furthermore, the spreadsheet was probably developed late 80s, possibly early 90s in a DOS based spreadsheet program (Lotus 1-2-3, maybe). Then it had to be converted to an Excel spreadsheet with the popularity of Windows. That transition from one software package to another presents opportunities for mistakes to happen.

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

I fully agree with you on this. Except for maybe the dates; the spreadsheet doesn't date back to the 80s, but it does to the 90s.

However, WTC has for years now been aware of their suboptimal implementation and their bugs (definitely separate things for them to consider), as I know by the ip addresses that have spent time at http://www.winthefight.org/scrap/kona.html

I also think it's hard for WTC to justify the lack of transparency. Why does it take me (and some guy in Australia; forget his handle) to reverse engineer their implementation. Why not simply post the calculator for all to play with?

Thanks for the info - it's interesting to see allocation and rolldown for various races. I've seen it scattered across various ST threads but does anyone know if there's a site with aggregated list?

Never cross a smart ST'er.

As a side note, being the #7 M4549 at CDA this past Sunday, I was on the beneficiary end of the blackbox.

I suppose it makes up for the other couple of times being on the losing end :)

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I envisioned the calculation being done by hand on a bar napkin with a pen borrowed from a waitress.

I don't think it's a conspiracy, just incompetence.