Well…that was then, this is now. One gets a little tired of beating one’s head against the wall.
Back “in the day” when the qualifying rule started, the Nerd Herd, a group of nerds that met here on COTH discussed using statistics to prove or disprove anecdotes about crappy riding at the time. The Centerline founder contacted the group, then went on to do his own thing.
We both offered to help USDF. The Nerd Herders offered to do “test validation,” “program validation,” and/or statistical analyses of judge and rider performance.
The objective of a statistical “validation” is to understand if or how much a program improves something. So, for example, you take a group of L-Candidates. You can test their knowledge before the training and test it after the training to determine how much the group was improved by the training. It is a way to see “validate” how an improvement program is impacting what it was intended to improve.
As far as judge and rider performance, there there were a lot of questions raised in the 2008-2010 qualifying rule time frame that could have been answered thru statistical analysis.
The USDF blew off all offers of help…a few people there got their hackles way up.
I wish I had saved the emails, but if I recall…at this same time, Centerline founder was a statistical/information/database guy interested in compiling the data and was willing to work with the USDF. The USDF also blew him off…
Can’t speak for Centerline, but I am not sure the good will that offered 10 years ago is still there.
Point is that multiples of people with multiples of advanced (PhD) degrees offered free help and USDF pissed it away.
