Manipulation of MPJ: A Few Answers

["Thomas L. Murphy" <tmurphy@swcp.com>]

I agree with some of the responses.  This form of manipulation assumes 
that (1) a team desiring to manipulate has access to judge information 
of other teams, and (2) that they know how to use it.  With the 
information, though, the manipulation (I contend) is still easy.  Taking 
Tuna's example regarding Bluto State:

If I know that, of the top sixteen teams in a tournament, 15 of them 
have marked Judges A through Z as "A," I can simply strike them or mark 
them as "C."  Granted, if Judge K always votes for Bluto State, and 
Bluto marks that judge as an "A," my team locks that judge in the round.  
But that argument is contingent upon my team hitting Bluto, which may be 
lower (odds wise) than my team hitting one of the other teams.

Obviously, there is the possibility (also) that my team would be hitting 
the "locks" for any of those teams.  But, at least in NDT, my guess is 
that the actual number of such locks is smaller than one would imagine.

Rhasea makes a better argument when he suggests that the size of CEDA 
would make this harder.  I agree.  However, another factor to consider 
is CEDA's rule (if it still exists) that a team cannot be judged at Nats 
by a judge from their own district.  I'll have to give that some 
thought.

Even a "strike" system can be statistically analyzed and used.  When I 
attended the national tournament, my approach was to compute average 
speaker points given, per judge, in the judging pool the year before and 
strike the lowest point givers.  My reasoning was that it would be 
better to loose with high points at the tournament than win with low.

-tlm

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