So I was taking a break from studying (because my mind can't take it anymore) and was flipping through random channels. One of the channels I stopped on was the food network (specifically, Iron Chief). Basically, two chiefs face off in a cooking challenge. They have to create a five course meal that incorporates the a certain ingredient, which is presented at the beginning of the challenge. After one hour, three judges score the meals on the basis of originality/use of the certain ingredient, presentation, and taste. The chief that receives the most point is the winner.
The other show I stopped on was this international dancing contest. Different groups would represent their country and have a dance off (couples vs couples, big groups vs big groups, etc). There was one judge present from each country. At the end of each category, the judges would give them a score on the scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest).
Now, the problem I have with these 'contests' is that there seems to be a lot of luck involved. With the cooking contest, doesn't a lot of the results depend on the judges you get? Perhaps the judge doesn't happen to like a certain type of food (not to mention that many of the judges on the show are just famous actors). This could be completely bias toward a certain chief, especially if that type of food is prevalent in his or her culture. Also, there is no score for the techniques that the chiefs use. The same applies with the dancing show, especially in terms of culture. These dancers come from all over the world, using all types of choreography. Of course there is technical merit, but this isn't specified in the scoring of the judges. Also, a judge from a certain culture just may not be impressed by another type of dance from a different culture and give the dance a low score. It seems to me that these contests depend on luck more than anything else.
This also got me to think about debate and model congress. Certainly, we debaters always talk the luck that is involved in winning at a model congress. We have all experienced what it's like to have 'bad' or 'good' committees and chairs (the person(s) who controls the progress of a debate in a committee). Of course, there is skill and a lot of enthusiasm/participation needed to win a award. However, there also seems to be a lot of luck involved: the number of times you get chosen to speak, how your chair views you as a person, the number of other people that are also striving to get an award, etc.
I know that is impossible to take all luck out of these situations. However, is there some way to reduce luck to a minimum and base these competitions more on a merit basis?
Mary Quien
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
In the case of the cooking show and the dance contest (I have no idea about model congress) I would think it is more merit based. The judges are most likely professionals, and they're probably all biased to a certain extent, but chances are good that they have wide tastes for both food and dancing. And I doubt they base their scores solely on personal preference. If they truly are professionals, they would probably be able to recognize talent/skill when they see it.
Emily T.
Well, to refer to one of my favorite quotes:
"Ireturned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." -Ecclesiastes
Essentially, there is no real way to cut down on luck and base competitions purely on merit, simply because there are always so many varying factors. Besides, isn't luck what makes life fun? Personally, I tend to say that luck evens out in the end for all of us.
(Eric Wei, who is panicking for MIDTERMS! Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...)
I think that the only way to make things more fair for yourself is to make yourself so good at what you do so that bias becomes a nonentity. Even though judges will always be biased (despite blind tests, decoys etc. Speaking of which, did you ever hear about the blind taste test involving a ton of very highly-regarded food critics? They evaluated this one dish and named it the winner. In the end, they found out it was Spaghettios) they still come to some sort of consensus.
In terms of Model Congress, the ones that are (usually) affected the most are the ones straddling the line. The ones who are the indisputable "bests" usually win being affected that much by bias.
Yes the judges are biased, but most of that bias is somewhat taken out of the equation by using multiple judges. In the dance competition, there are 7 judges for each dancer, and each one is an expert in dance. The chance of one judge being biased for a dance is no greater than the chance of another judge being biased against it. Luck usually balances out.
(Arvind Kalidindi)
This reminds me about our previous discussion of luck/chance/bias/The Dark Knight! And it also reminds me of Vocabulary (fortunate vs. fortuitous). The winner may be viewed as fortunate, but up until that point, all of the contestants may be considered to be fortuitous.
It would be difficult to remove luck from the judging process for the dance show. For some reason, however, I feel this would be more bias than luck, but anyway.. How could there be a neutral judge? Every judge must come from a nation; he/she must have a nationality.
Iron Chef judges are not required to enjoy every type of food that the chefs may whip up in their hour. Thus, like Emily, I think that these professionals/specialists have been trained to be as "fair" as is possible in such opinion-based competitions.
(Sam Maliha)
Post a Comment