How does HAL analyse handicap performance?
HAL looks at each race run under handicap (that is each race that is not a level
race) and performs the following procedure, which is adapted from the RYA's
recommendations for the Portsmouth Yardstick Scheme:
- Calculate the average corrected time across all the boats that finish the race,
using the same handicaps as used in the race results.
- Temporarily eliminate those boats that are poor performers. These are boats whose
corrected time is more than a certain percentage (default 5% but adjustable in Setup)
slower than the average. All the remaining boats are considered to be good performers.
- Recalculate the average corrected time using only boats that are good performers.
This is the Standard Corrected Time (SCT) for the race.
- Bring back the poor performers and calculate the handicap actually achieved by each
boat, using the SCT as the benchmark.
HAL then aggregates the analyses of each race by doing the following:
- Throw out all those races with less than a certain number of good performers. The
default is 5, but it is adjustable in Setup.
- Allow the user to step through the races throwing out additional races if necessary.
This allows the user to eliminate races from the statistics where something unusual
happened, such as a large wind shift.
- Produce overall statistics, both by individual boat and by type of boat, showing
the number of good performances, the average handicap achieved and whether that
was faster or slower than the handicap used to work out the results.
HAL does not make any changes to the handicaps in the Boat Register as a result
of the analysis. That is left to the user.
If you consider that a race has good statistics that would contribute to the performance database run by the RYA,
you can upload it directly from the output menu.
