V_V comments on [Open Thread] Stupid Questions (2014-02-17) - Less Wrong

3 Post author: solipsist 17 February 2014 05:34AM

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Comment author: ThisSpaceAvailable 18 February 2014 04:33:11AM 3 points [-]

Can anyone explain the Olympics' tournament system to me? Team A beats Team B and advances to the finals. Team C beats Team D and advances to the finals. Team A beats Team C. Team B and Team D now play for third place, and Team B wins. Team A is awarded the gold medal. Team C is awarded silver. Team B is awarded bronze. What's up with that? Team B and Team C have the same win/loss record. They both beat Team D, and lost to Team A. Why does Team C get the silver?

Comment author: V_V 18 February 2014 09:58:02AM 2 points [-]

from Wikipedia

In a random knockout tournament (single-elimination without any seeding), awarding the second place to the loser of the final is unjustified: any of the competitors knocked out by the tournament winner might have been the second strongest one, but they never got the chance to play against the losing finalist. In general, it is only fair to use a single-elimination tournament to determine first place. To fairly determine lower places requires some form of round-robin in which each player/team gets the opportunity to face every other player/team.

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