Archive > The Amazing Race 18 Spoilers and Speculation
Ranking the Teams of TAR: Unfinished Business
theschnauzers:
Here's an example of the problems this gets into with what ifs. The Globetrotters in that same season could be argued that they were eliminated due to the 4-hour penalty for not completing the roadblock. Even assuming that's true, what placement would they have had not only in that leg, but the leg for the final three that followed?
And you'd almost would have to answer that to address a comparison not only between those two teams (both of whom were cast in TAR:UB), but with the other returning teams, and make adjustments for any of the teams that might have had a change in placements for a leg due to penalties.
Now I'll repeat what I said before. This is not a tool to predict order of finish in TAR:UB. What I hope to see is whether prior performance of most of the teams in terms of average placement can be roughly predicted for individual teams. There was some of that in TARAS, but even there it got crazy because of the one hybrid team that did win it all, and if you only looked at Eric's past performance, was potentially predictable. What I think it proved is that Zach carrying Flo to a win was not a fluke; Race performance could well be determined by the abilities of the stronger teammate in some instances. That neither helps determines average placement nor placement order, but it does suggest an element for "Racer Mechanics," which I know I posted in a thread here at some point in 2009.
Jobby:
But from this cast, it is kind of obvious that the cowboys and the globetrotters had a better edge. They were racing against other alpha-male teams or all-male teams in the previous season they were on and had a more competitive race they needed to keep up with, as compared to teams like Margie and Luke and Ronald and Christina.. who although made the finale, but had no threat of a fit all-male team competitor along the entire race. I wouldn't count Mel and Mike or Nicholas and Don as fit all-male teams... and the other teams that raced along them towards the end (Final 4) are all-female or co-ed teams.
theschnauzers:
I'll repeat what I said before.
These statistics are not useful in predicting order of finish. They may indicate a team's average placement over the course of the Race.
One way to see this is to go back and look at the primary list in the "Ranking The Teams" thread. Look at the order of finish listed with each team. You will see that many second-place teams on average out-performed the winners, and some winners were out-performed by teams that did not make the final three.
So, you are raising an argument of interpretation, and you are free to do that if you wish, but do not make the assumption that the averages for the teams on TAR:UB from their original seasons are predicting the order of finish. I've not made that claim and given how close in those placement averages almost all the teams are, I don't see how that is likely to even happen.
theschnauzers:
As we're getting close to the premiere of TAR 18:UB, with no real further spoiler information on team placement than we had when filming was finished. So this is what I'm planning to do.
The primary ranking thread will be used to track each team's placement average, and the trends each week, and if it make sense at the time, to try to project the likely final three basis on the objective range of potential outcomes (as I did for TAR 16). This thread will be used to compare each team's average placement in TAR:UB with their average placement in their original season. As I mentioned above, I want to see how much of a difference teams actually average this time around compared to the first time for each team.
(I even have the source information handy so I could even do a comparison to the same week of their original season, but there could be a problem if a team lasts longer this time than they did in their original season. :) Think about it, it'll come to you soon enough.)
Since we already know about the TBC in the first leg, that leg will be treated for the purposes of ranking as two legs, with the TBC point as the point to rank the teams after leg 1A. No different than the rankings do with the other TBC legs. (I still like calling them uberlegs, since I was the one who came up with that one during TAR 6.)
DrRox:
Bump
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version