Tracking Progress

[NC Buckeye]

I shot a couple of IDPA events last year but really started training seriously late in the summer, then scheduling conflicts et cetera didn't permit me to shoot again until last month and I shot my 5th event yesterday. So I am far from an advanced shooter, but I keep a religious range log, I analyze every drill, Shoot more on the clock than off, and record myself as often as possible so that I can see my mistakes. I am also a data geek so that helps.

I have been attempting to track my progress against other local shooters and I have come up with metric that I think makes sense, but I wanted to see if it passes the sniff test here. The metric is "% of the High Division Corrected Score"

I have attempted to control for the differences in division by normalizing the times based closely on the different classifier times. So for each Division I adjust the match score by multiplying by a the following factors.

ESP: 1.00000

CDP: 0.97435

SSP: 0.94750

ESR: 0.89000

SSR: 0.87350

I then divide my time by the fastest corrected time of the day to calculate my metric. (On one occasion there were no masters at the event and I created a fake time to approximate their fast time to keep it reasonable)

Obviously there is considerable bleeding of classifications at each match but I have found:

The average Master time is within 10% of the fast time. (<110%)

The average Expert time is about 25% slower than the fast time (~125%)

The average Sharpshooter time is about 60% slower than the fast time (~160%)

The average Marksman time is about double the the fast time (~200%)

And oddly the average novice is slower than the average unclassified shooter.

Does this analysis fit with what you would expect? I believe this is an approximation of the USPSA rating system, only at the local level. As an unclassified shooter I have been looking for a way to find a "peer group" to compare myself against and to benchmark my progress against changing fields of shooters.

Based on these results my progress has been as follows...

March 27, 2010: 1.877299987

May 22, 2010: 1.912255795

July 24, 2010: 1.709918511

April 23, 2011: 1.699458532

May 28, 2011: 1.363102113

[double_r76]

I'm not surprised about your Unclassified shooters. There are a lot of really good shooters who just haven't shot a classifier. We've also got a few MA & EX class shooters that just haven't shot a classifier in whatever new platform they may be fooling around with, so they declare themselves as Unclassified. We've got a few SSP shooters that are routinely faster than the ESP and CDP shooters. Honestly, we've got some really fast SSR shooters that are running over the majority of the bottom feeders. There are just too many variables for me to come to those kind of conclusions locally.

As an example, we recently had a SSR/EX (he's also a SSP/MA, BTW) shoot his 5-shot S&W j-frame. You just can't capture that kind of stuff and get reliable results!

It looks like you're on a good path. If your sample size is a little larger and your local shooting demographic is a little more stable, then you may be able to come to some good conclusions.

Good luck and keep us posted!

-Randy

Edit to add... I'm a SSP/SS. Honestly, I've never looked for a peer group. I've always sought out those that are faster and more accurate than I am. I even scrub the squad sheets at sign-up to shoot with those guys and ask them for pointers throughout the day. I'm not at the level to do what they do, but I pick up tips and tricks every time I go out. I would encourage you to do the same.

Edited May 30, 2011 by double_r76

[Chills1994]

my rule of thumb that I picked up in 2007 was to look at the major match results. The "hired guns"...errr...sponsored shooters for the gun manufacturers usually place...well...usually they are the division champions. In the three semi-auto pistol divisions, you can typically see that these hired guns finish up score/time wise right around the minimum round count (MRC) for the match.

Unfortunately, via the results pages at IDPA.com...well...they usually don't post the MRC at the top of the results page. You'll have to do a little planning ahead of time and go to either IDPAforum.com to see if the MD has posted the MRC in his thread to drum up attendance at his match, or if that club has its own website with the CoF diagrams/stage descriptions posted.

At one point, I used to be all geek'ed out about the statistics of the IDPA scores...figuring out means, medians, and standard deviations.

Meh!

reckon a round a second scorewise...or rather a second per round, you're doing well.

[Steve Koski]

NC:

I like your method overall. However, I wouldn't give the CDP shooters any "benefit" based on their classifier times. CDP has to shoot a faster classifier than SSP, with an identical reload count. But in actual matches, the CDP folks have to do more reloads on the clock than SSP, sometimes 10 more!

Take care,

Koski

[Dan Burwell]

I don't like to compare myself to other shooters especially at matches. I have no idea if they are getting better, getting worse, had the match of their life, or a horrible day. I track my progress on my drills, I know I am getting better, what everyone else is doing is, well... thier problem.

It sounds like you are doing a good job on tracking your practice, so I'd stick to that and save the rest of the brain power for something else, like finding more time to dry fire.

[NC Buckeye]

This is how I do it now... http://www.balloongoesup.com/blog/2012/02/assessing-your-progress-in-a-local-idpa-match/

NC Buckeye

[Rob Tompkins]

IMHO, shoot the classifier 2, 3, or even 4 times a year and just look at your stage scores. To measure progress you need to shoot a COF that is long enough to test consistency across a good set of skills. Love it or hate it, the classifier does that in a known and predicable way.

[Not-So-Mad Matt]

At one point, I used to be all geek'ed out about the statistics of the IDPA scores...figuring out means, medians, and standard deviations.

The thing to realize is that IDPA scores are far from normal, in the technical sense, so your means and standard deviations will be misleading. More "robust" statistics, like median and interquartile range can be more reliable, but I usually just transform everything into a percent rank, clumping all classes and divisions together, so I can see where I performed comparatively well or not so well.

As others have mentioned, you can also normalize scores against the best score to get a USPSA-style percent score, but that is quite sensitive to how good that one best shooter shot the match (or stage).

[hkguy]

math aside, your best bet is to pick out a few good shooters who are "classified" above you and compare your match times to theirs. this will push you to get better and as you catch/pass them look for more shooters to compared your scores to.