Judges & Scoring

[gromit]

One of the things I thought was odd was how the judges were so all over the board on the scoring.

Each judge is supposed to base his score for the contestants in three areas: face, body, and overall sex appeal, with each area going from 1 point to 10 points, 10 being the highest.

Am I the only one who noticed how inconsistent it was -- you'd have one judge give a person a score like 9, 9.3, 9.5 and then another would give the *same* person a 5, 7, 8.2 , or whatever.

In some cases, a judge would rate a person low on one criteria (like the "face" cateogry), but the next judge would totally disagree and give the person a 9 in the same category.

Both male judges gave one woman scores of 8 and/or 9 on her face, but Hunter gave the same lady a "5." Things like that happened frequently. Beauty being in the eye of the beholder and being subjective, etc., seems to play into it. Obviously, all scores by all 3 judges are combined to reach an average, but it's so uneven I think the whole process seems pointless (not that I have a better idea on how to do the scoring).

[DigitalPrince]

I agree that what you point to can be a problem for the show and its perception, but as long as each judge is consistent throughout the judging it can be fair even if it may not appear to make any sense at the moment. Everyone judges on a slightly different curve.

The way they should have done it IMO, though it might make for boring TV, would have been to have had each judge (one at a time) sort all 8 contestants of one sex on the stage at the same time, say by lining them in a row up from favorite to least favorite. That way you get a side-by-side comparison and it all doesn't get obfuscated in face vs. "sex appeal" at all that. It's the relative rankings after all which ultimately matter. But then we wouldn't get to hear the assinine comments from the judges, which I think we viewers vicariously like since all these people look better than we do (for the most part) and we like to see them taken down a notch.

Also, since what one considers a pretty face is so subjective, they should have downrated that some by not weighting it equally. They probably should have called "sex appeal" personality instead, since the former depends on face & body but I think they meant it to mean a sexy personality.

Finally, they could have done away with all the subjective aspects on the female body judging (and sped things up at the same time) by maybe using something like the Bod-O-Meter ( http://Science.MartianBchelor.com/Bodometer/ ) for that part of the score.

[DigitalPrince]

Oh, one other thing -- that business of using decimals is sooooo bogus. At most they should only permit the judges to go down to halves. A precision of 0.1 just isn't believable -- like someone with an 8.7 is clearly better than a mere 8.6 . Give me a break.

Just one of the many reasons why the show sucks big...

[John]

I don't like the decimals either. Either you think they're a 10, or you think they're a 7. You don't think they're an 8.3 - that's just idiotic.

[DigitalPrince]

Agreed.

They could also do with more judges, like in figure skating where they've got so many they can throw out the high and low scores. But then we wouldn't get the fun of hearing from each one. I'd propose that the judges are the stars of shows w/this format.

Also, if they're going to have equal numbers of boys and girls, then they should have at least had an equal number of boy and girl judges, no?

The more I think about this show, the more I wonder what they were thinking when they made all these poor decisions. It could have been a good show.

[John]

I'm not sure about THAT, but I agree they could have made it better

[fluff]

The scoring is really ridiculous imo, I hate the decimals.
I agree with Digital Prince, they should only be allowed to go to "half" marks.
There is a real distinction between an 8 and an 8.5 anything less than that seems rather stupid