Pinewood Derby Times, Volume 18, Issue 11 - February 20, 2019

Newsletters from Maximum Velocity. Lots of great tips, special articles, race stories, car photos and more.

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Pinewood Derby Times, Volume 18, Issue 11 - February 20, 2019

Post by MaxV »

The eleventh issue of the Pinewood Derby Times newsletter (for the 2018-19 season) is now available at:
https://www.maximum-velocity.com/pinewo ... es_v18i11/

PINEWOOD DERBY TIMES
Volume 18, Issue 11
February 20, 2019

IN THIS EDITION

- Editor's Notes
- Feature Article: Design Award Judging
- Humor
- Product Showcase: All Pre-Cut Car Kits - 20% Off
- Pinewood Derby Car Showcase
- Pinewood Derby Memory: Perseverance
- Q&A

You can read the newsletter here:
https://www.maximum-velocity.com/pinewo ... es_v18i11/

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Re: Pinewood Derby Times, Volume 18, Issue 11 - February 20, 2019

Post by Darin McGrew »

I hope that you find this information useful. If you have a unique way of judging cars for design awards, please share your method with me.
We used to have judges rate cars in various attributes (e.g., creativity, detail, craftsmanship, etc.) and then we'd sum the scores to get a car's total score. But we noticed that judges were doing the summation themselves, and then adjusting the attribute scores to make the total scores come out the way they wanted. So our more recent derbies have merely offered the various attributes as things to consider when judging the cars.

And we used to have judges rate every car. But we noticed that the judges ended up spending a lot of time rating cars that would certainly not get a design award. And we noticed that the judges ended up making sure the scores of the top cars reflected the order they wanted the cars to be in (i.e., first had the most points, second hand the next most points, and so on). So our more recent derbies have merely asked the judges to rank the top n designs in order, and then we award those cars n points for first, n-1 points for second, and so on.

We also encourage the judges to ignore whether they think children built the cars on their own. First, because this is a parent-child event designed to encourage an adult and a child to work together. Second, because many kids can do amazing work with minimal adult help.

And since we started registering the cars a few days before the race itself (rather than an hour or two before the race), we've also been able to include input from many more judges, rather than just the 3 judges we used to use.

Years ago, when we used 3 judges who did their work between registration and the race (while the families were sharing a potluck dinner), we sometimes gave them categories (e.g., best overall, best automobile, best unusual) and let them choose winners by consensus. We also told them that if there was disagreement, then they should feel free to create a new award category (e.g., most nautical, most edible) so that all the cars that any of them thought deserved an award could get an award. But we haven't used that system since we started registering cars a few days before the race itself.
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