Awarding tropies

[Scoremaker]

<peeve type="pet">
So, if a kid builds a car that earns both a "Most Creative" trophy and a "Pack Fastest" trophy, which does he receive? Is there any provision to take the kid's preferences into account? (I've known kids who would skip the speed trophy if that allowed them to receive a design trophy that they had earned, and vice versa.)

Or to flip the question around, are the design trophies consolation prizes for those who can't win the races, or are the speed trophies consolation prizes for those who can't win the design competition?

I think that the design and speed competitions should be independent, in that winning an award in one shouldn't preclude you from winning an award in the other.
</peeve>

One thing in Boy Scouts you can only do one event if you go to District level so you have to choose which one you want to do Speed or Design!!! Only thing is that which ever the Scout pick you are only move up the person who did not receive an award. The other thing you can do in Pack level or any other level of racing you can always state in your rules NO competotor will recevie awards in both the SPEED or DESIGN EVENTS. One thing you need to say also the Speed over rules the Design or Design over rules the Speed. Everyone know that if you car looks good in Design you have a better shot at District Level same with Speed. I do that in my Awana program,and I have not had anyone complain about. I was told by a Scout Cubmaster he was going to do the same thing in his Pack level. The next year he did his Pack race parent's told him that they like that better than seeing someone coming home with both awards.

[Darin McGrew]

One thing in Boy Scouts you can only do one event if you go to District level so you have to choose which one you want to do Speed or Design!!!

Do two wrongs make a right?

Again, I think that the design and speed competitions should be independent, in that winning an award in one shouldn't preclude you from winning an award in the other. IME, it happens rarely, and when it does, everyone is happy for the kid who managed to earn two awards.

[Scoremaker]

You can always change it!!! I can say more but i'll use more than 60000 characters!!!!
It start out by changing how you give out the awards. Let the parent have some feedback. Have a suggestion box on how can we make this events better. Once you have all the suggestion hand out the cars and the rules. You can have all this done five months before your race event. How we give out our awards to the scouts. No competitor will receive awards in both speed and design events. You can make race event better if you talk to the parent's thats how you can make your Pack stronger by communcation. Change is always good some people do not like some do!!!!!

[*5 J's*]

<peeve type="pet">
So, if a kid builds a car that earns both a "Most Creative" trophy and a "Pack Fastest" trophy, which does he receive? Is there any provision to take the kid's preferences into account? (I've known kids who would skip the speed trophy if that allowed them to receive a design trophy that they had earned, and vice versa.)

Or to flip the question around, are the design trophies consolation prizes for those who can't win the races, or are the speed trophies consolation prizes for those who can't win the design competition?

I think that the design and speed competitions should be independent, in that winning an award in one shouldn't preclude you from winning an award in the other.
</peeve>

Darin, I understand your point - I would only be excluding the top four from the Pack that would be going to District. All other Den winners would be eligible for the design trophies.

Ideally I would have trophies that could be modified in situation to state "Pack Fastest and Most Creative", however, I don't have this ability. My second choice would be allow Scouts to be awarded multiple trophies - but the consensus from the Pack leadership was to allow one trophy per scout (with the exception of Scout's Choice).

I do not like the idea of allowing the scout to decide which trophy he would like. Let's say Johnny wins both Pack fastest and Most Creative. You ask him which one he wants, and he take Most Creative. So now you offer Pack Fastest to the 2nd fastest - but this scout knows he was not the fastest - Johnny was. I think this creates more disparity that it resolves. I also need to consider that I need to identify the top four in speed to send to Districts. If Johnny takes Most Creative over Pack Fastest - does he give up his slot as Districts?

Does this make the design awards consolation prizes? Well, that's a bit of a strong categorization. You need to consider this is a Pinewood Derby RACE. Did Don Murphy award Most Creative Trophies back in 1952 at the first Pinewood Derby RACE?

[FatSebastian]

Let's say Johnny wins both Pack fastest and Most Creative. You ask him which one he wants, and he take Most Creative. So now you offer Pack Fastest to the 2nd fastest - but this scout knows he was not the fastest - Johnny was. I think this creates more disparity that it resolves.

The alternative is that Most Creative is offered to the 2nd most creative. It could be argued that the Most Creative award is more subjective, while the Pack Fastest is objective, but if both kinds of awards are awarded per some kind of scoring system then creativity becomes objective. However, because your unit seems to use judges rather than, say, Cub voting, as the scoring system, then it may be possible to mask subjectively determined degrees of "creativity" .

However, I agree with Darin in principle, in that the practice of limiting awards won (or the pool from which they are judged) gives the appearance that one of type of award (usually the creativity awards) are "lesser" ones.

[*5 J's*]

Let's say Johnny wins both Pack fastest and Most Creative. You ask him which one he wants, and he take Most Creative. So now you offer Pack Fastest to the 2nd fastest - but this scout knows he was not the fastest - Johnny was. I think this creates more disparity that it resolves.

The alternative is that Most Creative is offered to the 2nd most creative. It could be argued that the Most Creative award is more subjective, while the Pack Fastest is objective, but if both kinds of awards are awarded per some kind of scoring system then creativity becomes objective. However, because your unit seems to use judges rather than, say, Cub voting, as the scoring system, then it may be possible to mask subjectively determined degrees of "creativity" .

However, I agree with Darin in principle, in that the practice of limiting awards won (or the pool from which they are judge) gives the appearance that one of type of award (usually the creativity awards) are "lesser" ones.

FS - as the Scout is not given the choice - nobody except the Excel spreadsheet that tallies voting - knows that the First Place Trophy was awarded to the second place Car.

Judging occurs midway through racing so all cars are in the pool - they are eliminated after racing as the top four finishers are entered into a vote tallying spreadsheet I made.

If the perception is the design awards are a "lesser" award - I am fine with that. This is a Pinewood Derby Race afterall.

[dna1990]

I know there are pack's with 'history' and at times, awards appear to be 'dominated' by a single scout or family...but just for the record, I vote against any rules that limit awards between speed/design. If you can build a cool-looking car that goes fast...then that sounds like two awards to me.

Now cool-looking (or whichever category) is subjective, right. So use that vote tally and tiebreakers to help 'spread around' some of the design awards if needed.

And we never exclude the Scout's Favorite if that winner already has another award. But surprisingly, the Scouts often chose something different than the leaders anyway.



We have never done them, but I like the intial sound of a den-level speed award. I like the fact that it should encourage team building and knowledge sharing...but I can see where it would lead to disparity. We have some really large/small dens, esp in the older groups where scouts have come/gone, or leaders have consolidated, etc. If we were to do it, I might consider taking a den average, but throw out the top and bottom times.

[*5 J's*]

Do you allow a car to take multiple design awards? Could one car take Best Craftsmanship, Most Creative, and Most Scout Spirit? If not do you prioritize? Wouldn't that make one lesser to the other as well? Or do you ask the scout which one he wants?

[FatSebastian]

Would the "fastest den" award prompt any den to try to keep "slower cars" from entering because they could "drag down the den's average"? Can you define the category in a way that entering a slow car or two does not hurt the den in this category?

What about using the median instead of the average (mean)? Unless there is a den with only two cars (unlikely), neither the fastest nor the slowest factor into the calculation directly, but affect the ranking of the final time(s) used in the estimate. The median tends to be fairly easy to compute if you have a way of sorting the values.

Using the median instead of a trimmed average might also help avoid the situation where the fastest den is always the one with the singly super-fast (outlier) car, thus allowing dens with consistently faster cars to compete for the den award. Use of the median also sidesteps the complication of defining "top half" when there is an odd number of cars in a den.

[rpcarpe]

I say use the MEAN, average all cars in the group vs group competition.
The goal is maximum involvement, and more kids watching/cheering more races.
When the group competition is advertised i.e. listed in the rules, the slowest car won't be very much slower and that one kid with a hand marker'd block of pine will get the help needed.

Make the group trophies bigger/better than the individual. Puts the focus on helping others instead of selfishly guarding your 'family secrets'.

[FatSebastian]

I say use the MEAN, average all cars in the group vs group competition. The goal is maximum involvement, and more kids watching/cheering more races.

Fortunately the median still involves all cars in the group, whereas the conventional (untrimmed) mean may suffer from potential problems previously mentioned.

Puts the focus on helping others instead of selfishly guarding your 'family secrets'.

Good point. I suppose a trimmed mean might encourage some of the den to cooperate, but not necessarily all, since the slowest will be ignored anyway?

[Darin McGrew]

Do you allow a car to take multiple design awards? Could one car take Best Craftsmanship, Most Creative, and Most Scout Spirit? If not do you prioritize? Wouldn't that make one lesser to the other as well? Or do you ask the scout which one he wants?

No, we don't present multiple design awards for one car. Yes, it's pretty obvious which awards are greater and which are lesser: First Place Design, Second Place Design, Third Place Design,...

Actually, that isn't entirely true. For the older kids, we have separate Automobile Design and Unusual Design awards. This actually benefits the kids who build automobile designs. With only a single design category, the judges tended to choose cars with unusual designs rather than cars with similar workmanship but with automobile designs.

We haven't had problems with cars earning awards in both the Automobile Design and Unusual Design categories. And yes, in a few cases, the person organizing the judging has actually asked kids whether they considered their car an automobile design or an unusual design. But the ones good enough to earn awards have been pretty clearly one or the other.

[*5 J's*]

Do you allow a car to take multiple design awards? Could one car take Best Craftsmanship, Most Creative, and Most Scout Spirit? If not do you prioritize? Wouldn't that make one lesser to the other as well? Or do you ask the scout which one he wants?

No, we don't present multiple design awards for one car. Yes, it's pretty obvious which awards are greater and which are lesser: First Place Design, Second Place Design, Third Place Design,...
quote]
Darin - my suggestion was to award - Scouts Choice, Most Scouting Spirit (1st & 2nd), Best Craftsmanship (1st & 2nd), Most Artistic (1st & 2nd), Most Creative (1st & 2nd). How would you prioritize these?

[Darin McGrew]

Darin - my suggestion was to award - Scouts Choice, Most Scouting Spirit (1st & 2nd), Best Craftsmanship (1st & 2nd), Most Artistic (1st & 2nd), Most Creative (1st & 2nd). How would you prioritize these?

In past years when we had targeted design awards like that, we let the judges meet, discuss the awards and cars among themselves, and assign them however they wanted. It was a consensus among the judges. The Best of Show award was above the others, but otherwise it was up to the judges to assign awards. The judges were given the 4 standard awards (Best of Show, Best Automobile Design, Best Unusual Design, Best Finish & Detail), but were encouraged to create new awards if there were additional cars that deserved awards. We'd end up with awards like Most Nautical, Most Yummy Looking, or Most Artistic, depending on what the cars looked like that year.

But based on the categories you proposed, and assuming that you want a scoring system that doesn't require your judges to come to consensus...

It sounds like Scouts Choice is independent, chosen by the scouts themselves. It also sounds like you want it to be independent of the other awards, since it's the only one that can be received by someone who has received some other award. So let's ignore it. That gives 4 categories: Scouting Spirit, Craftsmanship, Artistic, and Creative. Each category has awards for the top 2 places, for a total of 8 awards.

I'd have the judges rank their top 5 choices in each of the 4 categories, and I'd encourage them to include cars in the ranking for more than one category if they thought it appropriate. I'd assign points for each ranking. You could do a linear assignment (e.g., 1st = 5 points, 2nd = 4 points, 3rd = 3 points, 4th = 2 points, 5th = 1 point). Or you could do a non-linear assignment (e.g., 1st = 10 points, 2nd = 7 points, 3rd = 4 points, 4th = 2 points, 5th = 1 point). It all depends on whether you think the difference between 1st and 2nd is more important than the difference between 4th and 5th. But however the points are assigned, I'd add the points and get the top choices in each category.

If the top 2 scores in all 4 categories are unique, then you've got your 8 design winners, and you're done. If any car received 1st place in one category and 2nd place in one or more other categories, then I'd award it the category for its 1st place. Any remaining multiple-awards are going to have multiple 1st places, or multiple 2nd places without a 1st place. In this case, I'm looking for the category that is most characteristic of the car, according to the judges' scores.

First, I'd compare the car's score in each category, and give it the award for the category in which it had a higher score. So if it had a score of 19 in Scouting Spirit and 21 in Craftsmanship, then I'd give it the Craftsmanship award.

If the score is the same in each category, then I'd compare the difference between that car's score and the next car's score in each category, and choose the category with the biggest difference. So if it had a score of 19 in both Scouting Spirit and Craftsmanship, but the next highest score was 18 in Scouting Spirit and 15 in Craftsmanship, then I'd give it the Craftsmanship award because its score was 4 points above the next highest Craftsmanship score, vs only 1 point above the next highest Scouting Spirit score.

Regardless, once a car's category is chosen, that car is ignored when determining the results of other categories.

How does that sound?

[*5 J's*]

How does that sound?

That makes a lot of sense and I could easily modify the spreadsheet to work accordingly.

I am also going to talk to the leadership about having a "panel" that comes to a consensus for each award.

That would give us a couple of choices to ponder.

Scout's Choice is the chosen by the Scout's and is awarded independent of all other awards.

I will keep data and track how many times on of the top four fastest were deprived of design award, and we can adjust as necessary