Scoring Odyssey of the Mind Problems

All Odyssey of the Mind scores awarded by officials during competition are “raw” scores. Long Term raw scores may be any number up to 200. Style scores may be any number up to 50. Spontaneous raw scores may be any number, depending the problem and the scoring criteria. Raw scores are then “scaled” (sort of like curving grades).

YOUR TEAM’S RAW SCORE MEANS ALMOST NOTHING BY ITSELF

A Long Term raw score of 120 out of 200 might be the highest or the lowest score of the day. You won’t know how your score compares with others until the scores are announced at the end of the competition at the awards ceremony. Long term and Style scores are given to the coach by the Head Judge approximately 30 minutes after the team’s long term performance. The head judge will explain the long term scores and answer any questions. Raw Spontaneous scores are not told to the team after they compete in spontaneous.

The top Long Term raw score in a given problem and division is scaled to 200 in the Score Room. The highest Style raw score is scaled to 50. The highest spontaneous score in the same problem and division is scaled to 100. All other teams’ scores are scaled accordingly. All penalties are deducted in the Score Room from the final, scaled total score. A team that has a raw score that qualifies them in first place in all three categories, with no penalties, would have a scaled total score of 350. Many times one team will be top in spontaneous, another will be top in long term, and perhaps a third team will be top in style. Thus, you can see that until all the scores are entered and scaled, looking at your scores only tells you what the judges liked and what perhaps impressed them less.

Some scores in Long Term are OBJECTIVE: either the vehicle crossed the line or it didn’t; either the sound effect was produced or it wasn’t. All Long Term judges will give the team the same score (all or nothing — the action occurred or it didn’t) in those objective areas. The judges’ decision is final (and video tapes will never be considered in making a judgment call). If all the officials agree that they didn’t see something, it didn’t happen (as far as scores are concerned).

Some scores in Long Term are SUBJECTIVE: the score reflects the opinion of a given set of officials on a given day. SUBJECTIVE SCORES may not be questioned. Officials have given their opinion of a team’s creativity or performance, and their decision is final! The officials judging a given category each give their scores and these scores are averaged. If they thought a musical composition was worth 10 points out of 20, it wouldn’t matter if John Williams or Mozart was in the audience saying it was a perfect composition–subjective scores are final! This includes all style scores, which, of course, are entirely subjective.

Scoring Examples:

Team A Raw Scores: Long term 162 Style 37 Spontaneous 95

Team B Raw Scores: Long term 140 Style 43 Spontaneous 125

Team C Raw Scores: Long term 122 Style 49 Spontaneous 100

When these team’s scores are scaled, the final scores (and total) will be as follows:

Team A Scaled (Final) Scores: Long term 200 Style 37.76 Spontaneous 76 Total: 313.76

Team B Scaled (Final) Scores: Long term 172.84 Style 42.14 Spontaneous 100 Total: 314.98

Team C Scaled (Final) Scores: Long term 150.62 Style 50 Spontaneous 80 Total: 280.62

Note: To get Team B’s scaled long term score, take the raw score, 140, multiply by highest possible, 200, and divide by the top long term score, 162. Use this procedure for each score in each category, according to the possible maximums. Also note that the range of spontaneous raw scores can result in a great impact on the total, scaled scores. Sometimes spontaneous scores are all very close; sometimes there is a very wide range. Note, also, that in the example above, Team A was first in Long Term, Team C was first in Style, but Team B was first in spontaneous and had strong long term and style scores, placing them first overall.

It is extremely important that all teams understand that much of the scoring at an Odyssey tournament is subjective. Teams cannot, therefore, control all of their scores, and should concentrate on doing their best in solving the problem to the best of their abilities.

A team that has given its best effort will be a winner, regardless of score. Even failure is a positive in Odyssey of the Mind, because, in the words of one former Odyssey participant, “you learn more from failure than you ever learn from success”.

At the Regional level, the top teams based on the number of teams competing advance to State Finals. First and second place teams continue on to the World Finals competition. Teams awarded the Ranatra Fusca award for exceptional creativity, automatically advance to the next level of competition.