Investigating The Difference in Olympic Figure Skating Scores Throughout the Years
Background to Figure Skating Video
If you are unfamiliar with Figure Skating Scoring, please watch this video:
Introduction to Module
Figure skating is a sport where athletes perform choreographed routines on ice to music, combining athletic skill with artistic expression. Skaters compete in different categories like men’s singles, women’s singles, pairs (a man and a woman skating together), and ice dance (which focuses more on rhythm and movement). Each skater or team performs two routines: the short program and the free skate. The short program is a shorter routine with a list of required moves that every skater must include. Judges rate how well each move is done and how smoothly everything fits with the music. The free skate routine is longer and gives skaters more freedom to show their personal style and creativity. They still need to include certain types of moves, but they can choose how to put them together. Judges give scores for both routines based on how difficult the moves are, how well they’re done, and how artistic the performance is. The scores from both routines are added together, and the skater or team with the highest total wins.
The MensFigureSkating
dataset features data from male skaters in the winter Olympics since 2006. Variables include characteristics such as Name, Nation, Year. Other variables included the 3 types of scoring: Free Skate, Short Program, and Total Points. The relevant variables for this specific module are Total Points and Year.
For the sake of this module, the data set was tidied so that it excluded any skater who did not advance to the Free Skate round.
Data
The MensFigureSkating.csv
data contains scores from skaters in the Winter Olympics since 2006.
Download data: MensFigureSkating.csv
Variable Descriptions
Variable | Description |
---|---|
Rank | Rank of the skater |
Name | Name of the skater |
Nation | Country skater represents |
TP | Total points scored (SP + FS) |
SP | Short Program score |
FS | Free Skate Score |
Year | Year of Olympics |
Additional details related to the data are available on the SCORE Data Repository
Materials
Class Handout
Solutions