What are your questions about the competitive circuit?
Hi all, I'm looking for community engagement and questions about the structure and nature of West Coast competition, that I can hopefully answer for you. I have built a tool and a dataset that allows for deep exploration of the scene across hundreds of events and over many years. Intentionally keeping that a bit vague.
But! I'd love to hear your questions, so that I both can hopefully answer them but also get some ideas of what people want to know about, to give me some direction on how to improve it. And no, this won't ever become an app, you won't be able to sign up for it, and I'm not trying to sell you anything.
Some examples of the kinds of questions I can answer:
What's the median number of events someone competes at before making finals?
What are the easiest and hardest events in the US? In Europe?
Is competition easier or harder for follows than it is for leads?
Does having more judges at a competition result in more or less accurate judging? Are some judges more accurate than others?
Which division is the hardest to get out of? The easiest?
Is it true that the easiest way to earn points is to go to small events?
Do people who compete in Strictly do better in Jack & Jills? What about ProAm?
And some examples of the kinds of questions I can't answer:
Why didn't I make finals at my last event?
Why do judges tell me to roll through my feet when I know I already am?
How do I make the WCS community realize that social dancing is more important than competition?
What do I do to keep my lead from pulling me off time?
Hopefully by example there's some distinguishing qualities between what I can and can't answer.
Look forward to your questions!
Edit: I have seen questions posted as of about ~ 2 PM EST 8/14, and will try to get back to y'all this weekend with answers and stats!
Edit 2: Now that I am on vacation, starting to answer questions!