okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Monday, May 07, 2007
Measuring course quality
Here is a partial quote of something Eric W. posted at Attackpoint:
...I think there is far to much emphasis on nailing winning times at all events, including WOC. I think this subject generates much more heat than light. Winning times happen to be a convenient, easy to measure, objective criteria, but it tells almost nothing about the quality of course design. I put acute angle doglegs in the same category, as easy to observe and measure, but not as important as other issues.
Course quality is of course quite subjective, and difficult to quantify, but ultimately more important. It also takes a little more insight to comment on....
On my flight home yesterday, I spent some time thinking about these same issues - how to measure the quality of orienteering courses and how the current measures (things like distance, climb and winning times) don't always lead to very good courses.
I have a few thoughts on how to measure course quality. They need a bit more thought, maybe something for another day. Until then, if anyone has thoughts, feel free to leave a comment.
