Visual Representation II

Part I: The Drawbacks of Run-length Encoding
Wormwood has been adamant about the virtues of run-length encoding to represent a problem session (e.g. 37p-1f-36p-1f-25p, as discussed a couple of nights ago). However, the examples I have shown previously have been drawn from my recent high accuracy efforts and so look good when represented with run-length encoding. My opinion is that the practicality of run-length encoding to represent a session breaks down for sessions of significantly lower accuracy. Here is a real example on the far end of the spectrum (my efforts on 2/13/07):

3p-2f-2p-1f-2p-1f-1p-3f-1p-2f-8p-2f-8p-1f-1p-1f-2p-2f-1p-2f-1p-
1f-1p-1f-1p-2f-4p-2f-4p-1f-4p-1f-4p-3f-1p-2f-1p-1f-2p-2f-1p-1f-2p-1f-
1p-1f-3p-1f-6p-2f-3p-1f-3p-1f-15p-2f-4p-1f-1p-2f-4p-4f-4p-1f-1p-2f-2p-
2f-3p-3f-3p-2f-4p-2f-2p-2f-1p-2f-2p-1f-11p-2f-2p-1f-1p-1f-1p-5f-2p-1f-
4p-1f-1p-2f-4p-5f-4p-1f-2p-3f-5p-3f-5p-1f-7p-2f-1p-1f-1p-1f-1p-1f-2p-
1f-1p-1f-2p-4f-6p-1f-5p-1f-1p-1f-1p-1f-2p-2f-1p-1f-2p-1f-5p

This session was 197/309 (64% @ 1506 ± 90 ; 1476 final). As anyone can plainly observe, run-length encoding is not as advantageous in conveying the gestalt of a session when the accuracy drops. Furthermore, I would argue that a purely graphical (non-textual) representation would be more helpful, as I intend to show below.

Part II: A Second Round of Graphical Representation
After staring for some time at last night's attempt at a representation scheme, I arrived at the same conclusion as Loomis that the time weighting on the X-axis made it appear that more points were being lost by the tactician than really are. Aside from being misleading, I felt that this was intensely unfair to the hard working tactician. Tonight I attempt to fix that particular shortcoming by spacing the problems by time (actually log base 2.73 time), but keeping the bars at unit width. First, here is tonight's session (click to see full-size image):

37p-1f-36p-1f-25p
98% @ 1419 ± 92 ; 1399 final

And here is the same type of representation for the 2/13/07 session discussed above (you will definitely want to click for the full-size image):

If you open both full-size images simultaneously, you will be able to make direct comparisons. The differences in success rate, time for the session, time per problem, overall rating change (red versus blue), and change in RD over the session, are easily spotted. Notice how the bars get progressively shorter moving from right to left along the 2/13/07 session. This is the RD shrinking to about 17 from approximately 30. Notice as well that the 2/13/07 session has most of the blue above the line and tonight's session has about a fair mix--the graphical representation reveals the tactician's approach to time and score management that is not apparent in run-length encoding.

I won't be able to address wormwood's other suggestions tonight (yet again) because it is getting late, but they are still bouncing around prominently in my head. I definitely like the shading suggestion, but I want to find the perfect use. Of course, this may entail finding a way to make the bars wider, as the thin bars above are not entirely amenable to shading.

And, to my genuine dismay, no problem tonight...