So, the 15th and final qualification round is now done and dusted, with a fairly tight result in one of the final matches which spelled the difference between a shock exit and a comfortable progression for ZSL: Dublin/Fota vs Cotswold - HOOFSTOCK Dublin/Fota - 18/27 points - 66.67% Cotswold - 9/27 points - 33.33% ZSL vs Jersey - SOUTH AMERICA ET AL ZSL - 13/24 points - 54.17% Jersey - 11/24 points - 45.83% A ranking of all twelve organisations after five matches apiece will follow, but first..... confirmation of the six finalists: Klös League (A) Whitley (Paignton, Living Coasts and Newquay) Dublin/Fota Cotswold Wildlife Park Dathe League (B) RZSS (Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park) ZSL (London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo) Bristol Zoo Society (Bristol Zoo and Wildplace) .
Current Rankings Whitley (Paignton, Living Coasts and Newquay) - 5/5 matches won - 78.73% RZSS (Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park) - 4/5 matches won - 66.23% Dublin/Fota - 4/5 matches won - 58.84% Cotswold Wildlife Park - 3/5 matches won - 56.35% ZSL (London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo) - 3/5 matches won - 53.69% Bristol Zoo Society (Bristol Zoo and Wildplace) - 3/5 matches won - 52.26% Colchester Zoo - 2/5 matches won - 50.13% Marwell Zoo - 2/5 matches won - 43.29% ZSEA (Banham and Africa Alive) - 2/5 matches won - 39.44% Aspinall Foundation (Howletts and Port Lympne) - 1/5 matches won - 34.36% Jersey Zoo - 1/5 matches won - 34.33% Twycross Zoo - 0/5 matches won - 32.27% However, things will not be as cut-and-dried as it may seem as regards which organisation is best-placed to win the cup as a whole, as the six finalists will only carry scores forward from those matches which have *already* taken place between finalists, per the following explanation by @CGSwans at the start of the year: As such, each finalist is going into the next round as follows - precise scores omitted to reduce the risk of tactical voting, although it is easy enough to work them out: Whitley - 2/2 matches won RZSS - 2/2 matches won Dublin/Fota - 1/2 matches won Cotswold Wildlife Park - 0/2 matches won ZSL - 0/2 matches won Bristol Zoo Society - 1/2 matches won The first round of the finals will go up anon, along with further information about the category structure and voting system.
Grzimek League (Finals) Royal Zoo Society of Scotland Zoological Society of London Bristol Zoo Society Dublin / Fota Cotswold Wildlife Park Wild Planet Trust I've been mulling over the best way to operate the match categories for this one throughout much of the last few weeks, and finally hit on the idea to have each match comprise TWO categories to promote more debate and discussion. Obviously it would be unfair for any given collection to be presented with a category they had already faced - no matter the result - so after the final lineup was more or less certain, with the only undetermined factor being the progression of Colchester or ZSL, I calculated the pool of uncontended categories for every possible match (including alternate pools for whether Colchester or ZSL progressed) and then randomly selected two categories from each pool. Furthermore, as this will make weighing the various factors involved rather more complex, and render a 3-vote system even less suited for the purpose than it has seemed to be so far, I have decided that for the coming nine matches we will be playing with a 5-vote system; it will still be impossible to vote for a perfect tie, but this will allow much more subtle judgements to be made. Hopefully some people who have been sitting the game out so far due to feeling the voting system was too simplistic may be lured out of hiding of course, a voting system such as this will mean that overtly biased votes will represent even more of a potential imbalance than before - especially if participation levels remain low - and therefore this all comes with one important caveat: If one gives a 5-0 vote, you MUST provide appropriate justification for this in-thread. Any such votes which are either unexplained, or break the rules of fair play in some fashion, will be void. To provide more chance for people to focus on the discussion at hand without diverted attention - and because there are 9 matches in the finals, meaning running multiple matches at once is more unwieldy - only one match will run at a time. This said (and also said in the thread for the first match to ensure people are aware of how things will progress) the first match of the finals is as follows: British Isles Cup Redux - FINALS - Dublin/Fota vs Bristol/Wildplace Now, get voting
The first result from the finals is in: Dublin/Fota vs Bristol/Wildplace - CARNIVORES and AFRICA. Dublin/Fota - 24/55 points - 43.64% Bristol/Wildplace - 31/55 points - 56.36% But how will the next round go? British Isles Cup Redux - FINALS - Cotswold vs ZSL
The next result is in, after a hotly-debated round: Cotswold vs ZSL - BIRDS and TROPICAL FORESTS Cotswold - 24/55 points - 43.64% ZSL - 31/55 points - 56.36% I hope the next one is just as hotly debated! British Isles Cup Redux - FINALS - Whitley vs RZSS
A pretty decisive match, but one which provoked a fair amount of discussion as I hoped: Whitley vs RZSS - HOOFSTOCK and TEMPERATE/BOREAL FOREST Whitley - 11/60 points - 18.33% RZSS - 49/60 points - 81.67% Let's see how the next one shapes up..... British Isles Cup Redux - FINALS - Cotswold vs Bristol/Wildplace
Disappointingly quiet, but never mind - onwards and upwards! Cotswold vs Bristol and Wildplace - TEMPERATE/BOREAL FOREST and MOUNTAINS AND POLES Cotswold - 11/30 points - 36.67% Bristol/Wildplace - 19/30 points - 63.33% Hopefully the next round will prompt a shade more enthusiasm: British Isles Cup Redux - FINALS - Dublin/Fota vs RZSS
Another disappointingly quiet round, with one vote which had to be discounted as potentially-unsound and not playing by the rules - but a result came in nonetheless: Dublin/Fota vs RZSS - ISLANDS and WATER Dublin/Fota - 12/30 points - 40% RZSS - 18/30 points - 60% Definitely hoping for more participation next time round: British Isles Cup Redux - FINALS - Dublin/Fota vs ZSL
A somewhat more active match, thankfully, and one which prompted a fair bit of discussion and a pretty close result: Dublin/Fota vs ZSL- ASIA and PRIMATES Dublin/Fota - 25/55 points - 45.45% ZSL - 30/55 points - 54.55% I reckon this next one might be quite interesting: British Isles Cup Redux - FINALS - Whitley vs Bristol/Wildplace
Slightly quieter round, but one with a reasonable amount of discussion and a pretty close result: Whitley vs Bristol/Wildplace - MISCELLANEOUS MAMMALS and GRASSLANDS AND DESERTS Whitley - 21/45 points - 46.67% Bristol/Wildplace - 24/45 points - 53.33% The penultimate match awaits..... British Isles Cup Redux - FINALS - Whitley vs ZSL
An even quieter round than last time, but one with a pretty conclusive score - a lot moreso than I expected: Whitley vs ZSL - AFRICA and ISLANDS Whitley - 13/35 points - 37.14% ZSL - 22/35 points - 62.86% And now, the final round - which I definitely hope draws a shade more discussion! British Isles Cup Redux - FINALS - Cotswold vs RZSS
I'm glad the final round drew more discussion, even if I am a bit disappointed it took until then for people to participate a little more Cotswold vs RZSS - PRIMATES and SOUTH/CENTRAL AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN Cotswold - 26/70 points - 37.14% RZSS - 44/70 points - 62.86% Final rankings and scores to follow, along with a few additional odds and ends of statistics......
As already discussed, the finalists only brought forward those scores from the qualification round which were earned against fellow finalists - this, it turned out, made a fair bit of a difference where final rankings were concerned. I have calculated both the "official" final scores and rankings, and the "unofficial" score and rankings - the latter taking all scores from the first round into consideration, just for the sake of curiosity. OFFICIAL FINAL RANKINGS RZSS (Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park) - 5/5 matches won - 66.620% Bristol Zoo Society (Bristol Zoo and Wildplace) - 4/5 matches won - 54.532% ZSL (London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo) - 3/5 matches won - 49.112% Whitley (Paignton, Living Coasts and Newquay) - 2/5 matches won - 48.048% Dublin/Fota - 1/5 matches won - 45.818% Cotswold Wildlife Park - 0/5 matches won - 35.870% UNOFFICIAL FINAL RANKINGS RZSS (Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park) - 7/8 matches won - 66.961% Whitley (Paignton, Living Coasts and Newquay) - 5/8 matches won - 61.975% ZSL (London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo) - 6/8 matches won - 55.270% Bristol Zoo Society (Bristol Zoo and Wildplace) - 6/8 matches won - 54.290% Dublin/Fota - 4/8 matches won - 52.911% Colchester Zoo - 2/5 matches won - 50.13% Cotswold Wildlife Park - 2/8 matches won - 49.903% Marwell Zoo - 2/5 matches won - 43.29% ZSEA (Banham and Africa Alive) - 2/5 matches won - 39.44% Aspinall Foundation (Howletts and Port Lympne) - 1/5 matches won - 34.36% Jersey Zoo - 1/5 matches won - 34.33% Twycross Zoo - 0/5 matches won - 32.27% One will note that the upper echelons of this scoreboard comprise rather different - and closer - rankings! Of course, even these unofficial rankings do not give an ideal picture of how the collections compare - firstly, those organisations which did not progress are scored on fewer matches. Secondly, those matches they *were* scored on comprised the 3-vote system which (as previously observed) did not allow for the same subtlety of voting that the 5-vote system does. As such, I suspect most if not all of the lower-scoring competitors would have achieved higher overall scores had the 5-vote system been in play from the off.... and might have even progressed further than they did. The other factor (other than a scoring system which was not ideal for the purpose at hand) which somewhat stymied this UK Zoo Cup was the relatively low level of participation; other than the very start of the Cup, and during a handful of particularly heated matches, there were markedly fewer members of the forum taking part in these threads than has been the case in prior Zoo Cup challenges. Some portion of this is doubtless due to the provincial nature of this particular Cup, but this cannot be entirely the case given the fact that the abortive first attempt at these threads by @CGSwans at the start of this year were attracting significantly higher numbers of participants. The main reason this low level of participation presented a problem - and almost certainly skewed the results on a number of occasions - is that it meant that outlying votes (either in favour of the eventual winner or not) had a much heavier weight on the eventual result of a given match than would otherwise have been the case. For instance, I have worked out that in the penultimate round, where one individual voted 4/1 in favour of ZSL and six individuals voted 3/2 in favour of ZSL, only two additional 3/2 votes for ZSL or a single 3/2 vote in favour of Whitley (either of which would have reduced the impact of the single 4/1 vote on the final score for that match) would have switched these two collections in the final Zoo Cup rankings.
Out of curiosity, I have worked out the participation level throughout the cup: Round 1 - 23 participants Round 2 - 28 participants Round 3 - 17 participants Round 4 - 10 participants Round 5 - 13 participants Round 6 - 15 participants Round 7 - 11 participants Round 8 - 18 participants Round 9 - 8 participants Round 10 - 12 participants Round 11 - 8 participants Round 12 - 10 participants Round 13 - 8 participants Round 14 - 14 participants Round 15 - 11 participants --- Final 1 - 11 participants Final 2 - 11 participants Final 3 - 12 participants Final 4 - 6 participants Final 5 - 6 participants Final 6 - 11 participants Final 7 - 9 participants Final 8 - 7 participants Final 9 - 14 participants Or to put it another way..... So it is perhaps easy to see how one or two skewed votes can make a big difference in such circumstances!
@TeaLovingDave, is it to early to start making predictions? Because the United States has a lot of Guinea Pigs to play around with.....
Says something that the top 5 were all societies with several zoos. It seems this advantage was too much for any of the lone collections to surmount. Again, thanks for organising this all
Well, as noted the original voting system had a role to play too I think - had we been working on a 5-vote system with more subtle judgements possible, I suspect Colchester might have progressed rather than Bristol between the former picking up more vote margin than a 2-1 against it allowed, and Bristol getting a narrower vote margin than a 2-1 in its favour allowed. Whitley struck lucky with two 3-0 washouts which wouldn't have happened in a five vote system, too.
I think Colchester also suffered from being in the stronger group, it is obvious their group wasn't kind given the final top 3 all came from that one!
TLD, thanks for putting so much effort into organising the cup, I for one very much appreciated the organisation that goes into it! Despite low participation the cup was very well run and I don't think anyone can argue too much about the competition being grossly unfair given the number of matches each zoo got to play and the diverse categories.
