{"id":937,"date":"2013-09-12T15:06:58","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T20:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/?p=937"},"modified":"2013-10-17T15:37:40","modified_gmt":"2013-10-17T20:37:40","slug":"does-speaking-order-make-a-difference-in-toastmasters-contests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/12\/does-speaking-order-make-a-difference-in-toastmasters-contests\/","title":{"rendered":"Does speaking order make a difference in Toastmasters contests?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-694\" alt=\"trophy\" src=\"http:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/trophy.jpg\" width=\"109\" height=\"120\" \/>There are various opinions on this topic, and I researched it a few years ago, using old contest programs from division contests and higher.\u00a0 With ten contests in a few days, and 88 contestants, the 2013 semi-finals and finals looked like a great opportunity to revisit this.<\/p>\n<p>The data shows a decisive bias, speakers later in the order are more likely to win.\u00a0 Out of 30 placings (1st\/2nd\/3rd in 9 semis plus the final), the average place in the speaking order was 60% of the way through.\u00a0 If speaking order had no impact, this would be 50% (about the same as I found in my previous analysis).<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First place was especially biased, at 72%, over 2\/3 through the contest.\u00a0 In the ten contests, two first place winners spoke last, 8 of the 10 spoke in the last half.\u00a0 Second place was at 52%, third place at 58%.\u00a0 Only 1 first-place winner (out of 10) was among the first 3 speakers in a contest, only 1 second-place winner was among the first 3, and only 4 third-place winners were among the first 3.<\/p>\n<p>How do we address this?\u00a0 The only solution I see is in working harder to make sure judges are aware of this bias, in their training, and in their briefings.\u00a0 Some advocate independently scoring each contestant, without referring to the scores of previous contestants.\u00a0 It does tell us that we should not let contestants swap speaking order, even if both are willing.<\/p>\n<p>Your ideas?<\/p>\n<p>Full details in this spreadsheet: <a href=\"http:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/SpeakingOrder.xlsx\">SpeakingOrder<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/groupItem?view=&amp;gid=98449&amp;type=member&amp;item=101245254\" target=\"_blank\">previous analysis <\/a>which I had posted on LinkedIn in early 2012:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;This was mostly international speeches, there weren&#8217;t enough of the other types to get reliable numbers from them. I would doubt there&#8217;s a difference, but who knows. My sampling was division or higher contests, at least 4 contestants (but almost always at least 5).<\/p>\n<p>The first place winner was, on average, 68% of the way through the order, second place was 65%, and third place was 54%. If there were no advantage, you would expect to see around 50% for all three (halfway through the order).<\/p>\n<p>Out of 49 contests that I reviewed, 34 winners (69%) were in the last half of the order, while 14 (29%) were the last speaker. 23 winners (47%) were the last OR next to last speaker. Pretty clear edge.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are various opinions on this topic, and I researched it a few years ago, using old contest programs from division contests and higher.\u00a0 With ten contests in a few days, and 88 contestants, the 2013 semi-finals and finals looked like a great opportunity to revisit this. The data shows a decisive bias, speakers later [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contests","category-international-convention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions\/975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}