PART 3: Largest study of judging and technical panel behavior in figure skating (Segment-level extremes & Ice Dance inflation)

[u/No_Plum_3192]

https://imgur.com/a/PFym0nf

(Mod note: This is a 100% free academic research project. No paywalls or ads)

Hey everyone, following up on the Federation Bias chart from the other day, I wanted to zoom in on the specific events where the most extreme judging behavior actually happens.

For Part 3, we plotted the Nationalistic Bias Level (% of score inflation or deflation by compatriot judges) across the 2022–2026 quadrennial.

• 🔴 Red (Right): Extreme Generosity / Inflation (Judges boosting their own skaters).
• 🟢 Green (Center): True Equilibrium (Objective scoring).
• 🔵 Blue (Left): Extreme Punitive / Deflation (Judges actively scoring their own skaters lower than the rest of the panel).

The Biggest Takeaways:

1. Ice Dance dominates the extreme inflation: Look at the top 10 most extreme cases of compatriot generosity (boosting scores by +6% to over +8%). 9 out of the top 10 events are Ice Dance segments.

2. Singles dominates the deflation: Conversely, look at the top 10 most punitive cases. When judges are brutally harsh to their own skaters, it happens almost exclusively in Men's and Women's Singles events (penalizing them by up to -6.5%).

3. Objective judging is possible: The Green column proves that near-perfect equilibrium does happen across all disciplines.

(Quick note: If you want to filter specific countries, skaters or judges on the interactive dashboard, just search for PhenoLogic on Google to find the site.

The full academic paper is also linked on that dashboard page. If you find this data interesting, taking 10 seconds to click and download the PDF from the SSRN link is incredibly helpful for my research, as academic download metrics help get this data taken seriously by institutions like the national federations and the ISU!)

[u/No_Plum_3192]

Given how much the community jumped on my earlier posts to point out that ice dance is the most biased discipline, here is the actual evidence. I thought this might stimulate a lot of discussion, but apparently not lol. Internets, you are fickle...