USPSA Revo Hit Factors

[Tom Freeman]

On a serious note, has anyone heard any talk about how big the database needs to be before USPSA revisits the hit factors?

As to not take away from james McMillans thread...

I really hope they address this sometime.

The last time I called and asked the hit factor question, I was pretty much told to go cry somewhere else.

I also asked about my revo Classification. L2598. How can a 32% and a couple below 50% count, but th ones over 70% and 80% not count. I got the same answer.

I think that was 2004 sometime.

[Ron Ankeny]

Hi Tom:

Thanks for starting a new thread. I shouldn't have drifted the other one.

I shot a revolver for a whole 3 months back in the summer of 2003. I remember visiting with Val when my initial classification came back as Master based on a four classifier special. I thought the numbers were bogus and I wanted to know why. Turns out, there weren't any reloads in the classifiers and the hit factors were based off of another division with a larger than necessary margin added in for a cushion. Kind of weird, but they had to start somewhere.

I recall Val telling me they were in the process of building a database of revolver scores and they would revisit the hit factors when the database was large enough. I like Val, she is polite, professional, and informative. I was just wondering if any of the guys and gals who follow revolver division if there is anything in the works.

[professor]

Tom,

I took a look at your classification records. You're a victim of your own success.

Basically, you made M in Production, before getting classified in Revo. It takes 4 scores to get an initial classification, and the first 4 scores you get are automatically valid. You shot those 4 scores in Revolver between June and September, 2001. They gave an average of about 53.6%, which would normally be in the middle of C class. But I believe you were ranked M in Production at that time. Since your classification in any other division can be no more than one class below your highest ranking, you were made Class A in revolver based on your M in production.

Then it gets interesting. Because classifier scores vary up and down so much, the validation process is set up to ratchet the average score upwards. If you check your scores, you'll see only 6 "Y" scores in Revolver, and the rest are flagged "B" and "C".

No matter what your classification, a score that is more than 5% below the bottom of the classification range is flagged "B" and gets discarded. In addition, if you're ranked higher in a different division, you cannot validate a score that is more than one class below your highest class. That makes the floor for valid scores equal to the bottom of your classification range.

So when you were M in Production and A in revolver, any score lower than 70% would be flagged "B" and get discarded, and any score between 70% and 75% would be flagged "C" and get discarded. During this situation, you managed to get a couple of valid scores, of 77.77% and 85.25%, that pushed your valid classifier average up to its current value of 62.88%. In the process a bunch of scores below 75% were ruled invalid, even though 3 of your original 4 scores.

Oops, got to close for now. be back later.

[professor]

Sorry for the interruption. As I was saying...

In the time frame when you were class M Production, class A revolver, a bunch of scores below 75% were ruled invalid, even though 3 of your original 4 scores are well below many of the scores that were subsequently trashed. Had you achieved more than a total of 6 valid scores, the lowest two of the latest 8 valid scores would be flagged "F", and only the best 6 of the latest 8 valid scores would count toward your average.

Of course, you then made things worse, as far as your revolver scores were concerned, by attaining GM in production. This automatically moved you up to Master in revolver. Under these rules, any classifier score below 80% would be flagged "B" and get discarded. Furthermore, any score between 80% and 85% would be flagged "C" and be discarded. And that rule applies even though you've still got those 3 crummy scores from 2001 in your "valid" score group.

I also note that you have 3 classifier scores in the bag for the new Single Stack division. One more classifier, no matter how good or poor the percentage, will produce the 4 valid scores necessary for Sedro Woolley to compute an average percentage for that division, at which time you will automatically be a Master class SS shooter. Congratulations! And any additional classifiers you shoot will have to be at least 85% to get added to your Single Stack valid classifier list.

[professor]

It occurred to me that this thread was supposed to be about changing the HFs applicable to revolver shooters on the various classifiers. I've been following classifiers HFs since I started in the sport back in 2000. From 2000 to 2006, I don't think any of the classifier HFs for revolver changed at all. And the CM99 series and CM03 series classifiers were set using various percentages of the Limited HFs for those COFs.

The CM06 series were the first to use hit factors actually compiled by revolver shooters to set the HF for those classifiers. If you check, the classifiers that went into the CM06 series were shot at the Nationals [in various years], or at major Area matches, and there were a number of top revolver shooters in attendance. The top revolver shooter's HF was accepted as the HF standard for those new classifiers.

However, for the first time that I know of, a HF for a classifier has been changed, and it occurred for CM06-04. Without getting into the actual numbers, I shot this classifier in 2007, and thought I would get a A class result of about 78%, based on the HF established when the classifier first came out. However, when the new numbers were posted by Sedro Woolley, I only got 73.2%. Checking the numbers, other shooters were being scored using the same implied HF, which was now higher than the HF used when the classifier first came out.

So the answer to your question about updates to HF is "Yes", at least one has being updated. I don't think there is a general policy that mandates when of which classifier HFs will be reevaluated, even though there is a tremendous body of data for the CM99 and CM03 series, which would produce much more realistic revolver HFs than some of the values in use, that have never been changed.

It will be interesting to see what the revolver HFs are for the new CM08 batch of classifiers, because many of them come to us courtesy of the Single Stack Nationals, and there weren't any revolver shooters participating in that event. I don't know if we'll be back to using a fictitious percentage of the HF from some other division, or what. What I do know is that the classifier "Seven" requires revolver shooters to perform a reload to take that 7th shot, and nobody in any other division needs to do a reload to complete that COF. There are also several fixed time classifiers that require reloads, and revolver equipment is still more time-consuming to reload than a typical semi-auto pistol.