PRS Talk Some 2018 PRS data - for the wonks in the house

[anotherwannabe]

I was curious about a few things, so did a little playing with the 2018 PRS results data
There is a little bit of noise in the data like guys who shot both TAC & Open, so a few weird data points here and there, but I've spot checked a lot things that looked suspicious and I think its all explainable.

Would have been easier with access to the database directly, but not all that hard to scrape off the PRS website. Hopefully others might find it interesting.

Data + minor commentary:

If you don't shoot 3 matches, you can't make the finale.
If you want to make the finale, you better be prepared to shoot >=6 matches.... Unless your first 3 go exceedingly well. A few guys were able to do exactly, that but "most folks" that made the finale shot 6-8 matches + the finale. The data point of someone shooting 21 national matches last year is not an error

I didn't include club match data below but a lot of the guys shooting >=6 national matches were also shooting 1-6 club matches. If they were shooting NRL, Borderwars, etc thats also not reflected since this is scraped from PRS website only.

Looking at the "best" finishes for PRS doesn't always tell you the whole story about how shooters tend to finish.

By sorting on average finish (yellow) and normalizing the finale as just 1 match not 2x, you can see a different trend in how guys are finishing on average.
No matter who you are, regardless of season finish, bad matches just happen (perhaps an equipment issue if its -really- bad versus the avg).
The guys with the highest averages, tend to be shooting the most matches, and also have notably better "best finishes" than the guys shooting fewer matches.

Correlation is not causation - but its intuitive that shooting more matches will make you better, and the better you are, the more matches you're probably going to shoot to try and win. Even at the top of the heap though, very few of the "best" guys would have qualified for the finale if you simply took their first 3 matches of the season, so shooting more events to get your best events to count is part of the PRS points game.

Just another view of that same plot but sorted by best finish, not average:

Anyways - just some food for thought

 

[morganlamprecht]

good stuff

i was in with 3 last year and alllllmost didnt shoot Jurassic, but i did anyways since i was already signed up and had planned on it all year...then halfway thru day 1 my barrel took a dump...should have stayed at home haha

 

[Sheldon N]

Awesome info.

Agree that it takes multiple matches both to increase the odds of having your "best day", and also just need to shoot lots of matches to get the experience level to be able to place well. Took me 4 matches to barely get in last year (one bad match with gear issues) then 5th match gave me a better standing going into the finale.

Did you scrub prior year data into your analysis or just 2018 info? That would be a ton of work but you could get some really cool statistics having each shooter's lifetime PRS results as part of the underlying data.

Statistics I'd be curious to see...

How many matches on average does someone shoot before they make it into their first finale?
Graph of predicted average score for your next match, having shot X number of previous matches (season or lifetime).

Other thing I think would be really cool is some sort of "Power Ranking" based on the average placement out of the past 2-3 years of finishes in PRS 2 day matches including finales, or even just of the current year data. It would be interesting to see who was the most consistent vs those who shot a ton of matches to get their best result.

 

[anotherwannabe]

I only pulled the 2018 data but it could be done 2017 without too much hassle, though I'm not sure we'd learn much/anything different?

I'll produce a CDF function of how many matches got shot before each shooter qualified for the finale this year, thats both easy to produce and understand.

I have done some spot studies on what a shooter's progression looks like from first match to "current" match but the data is really noisy and I'm not sure there is anything general you can extract from it aside from, the more you shoot the better you get (for most people).

I've got a few other things related to match standings I've been playing with, I'll post them once I figure out the right way to visualize it. There are at least two people who might find it interesting

It certainly would be possible to produce an ESPN style power ranking, but its a bit more of a PITA since I'd have to really suck all the info into a real database to make it feasible. The fact that (even top 100) shoots tend to come and go on a yearly basis it might harder than expected too. Maybe you should lobby Shannon for this with the new website.

 

[anotherwannabe]

Go to enough events you eventually hear the hens clucking about how this match or that match is a "meatball match". Some people love 'em, some people hate 'em - oh well. With 40 matches, all having different directors, course of fire, props, target sizes, and shooters who show up (local vs travel, region, etc), differences are always going to exist. No way around it and its part of what makes our niche different than benchrest or f-class.

Shannon mentioned the qualifiers this coming year are to try and normalize the points race without hurting the diversity of matches, so I'm sure he's done his own digging. Love or hate the solution, he deserves a big thumbs up for taking some risk and trying new things.

 

[Sheldon N]

Yeah, the finale was a meatball match for sure.

 

[anotherwannabe]

The finale is unique in that the selection of shooters is pre-ordained as a group that typically will finish top 25 (or better) in any given match. So you should expect a tighter clustering of % finish on an “average” course of fire. That may or may not have influenced the clustering at the actual finale ?

 

[Sheldon N]

The finale is unique in that the selection of shooters is pre-ordained as a group that typically will finish top 25 (or better) in any given match. So you should expect a tighter clustering of % finish on an “average” course of fire. That may or may not have influenced the clustering at the actual finale ?

Median Score for the PRS finales

2018 - 87%
2017 - 77%
2016 - 68%
2015 - 79%
2014 - 63%

Just imagine what it would have looked like if it wasn't windy on Day 1.

 

[morganlamprecht]

yea the ‘18 finale was the easiest match I’ve ever shot target size vs distance wise...even with 15-20mph winds on day 1 it was easy...it was more of a position building race than precision shooting contest

 

[MountainHunter]

Pretty cool data here. I heard the PRS put together a list of last years matches that analyzes top/median scores and they have a guideline for where they’d like matches to end up. Not sure where to find that document but I heard it’s out there somewhere.

Speaking of scores did you guys see the results for the Axisworks match this last weekend? Pretty amazing performance by Jon, I’m looking forward to seeing the breakdown on how he distanced himself so far from the pack.

 

[morganlamprecht]

i think that analysis was on the PRS over view video put out by shannon a little while back

it broke down a lot it, i havent seen it in document form anywhere

yea, pynch crushed it

 

[anotherwannabe]

The data Shannon showed briefly at the finale was very interesting which is what got me thinking about some of these in the first place.

Here is one more plot. Its a little hard to back into the number but I think the cutoff for the number of shooters that got invited to the finale was a point total of 268.xx. This plot shows the number of shooters that achieved a given point total and how many matches it took for them to do it.

My assertion above that "not many" got in on just 3 matches wasn't particularly accurate, it looks like ~40 folks could have qualified with just their first 3 matches. Conversely, ~ 25 shooters needed 6 or more matches to make the finale.

 

[G700b]

The data Shannon showed briefly at the finale was very interesting which is what got me thinking about some of these in the first place.

Here is one more plot. Its a little hard to back into the number but I think the cutoff for the number of shooters that got invited to the finale was a point total of 268.xx. This plot shows the number of shooters that achieved a given point total and how many matches it took for them to do it.

My assertion above that "not many" got in on just 3 matches wasn't particularly accurate, it looks like ~40 folks could have qualified with just their first 3 matches. Conversely, ~ 25 shooters needed 6 or more matches to make the finale.

View attachment 7028467

Is there any data out there regarding hit percentage of the winners of pro matches from 18’?

 

[anotherwannabe]

I can't scrape that from the website because it doesn't document how many shots/points were available in each match. From my limited experience I can say that the "winner" in a national match is minimally hitting 80% and more often than not 90-95% of the available shots. Occasionally its lower if the match or conditions are really tough, but thats the exception not the rule.

Most 2-day matches are 200 round count and might have 190-200 shots/points avail and 1 day matches are 100 round count and have 80-100 shots/points avail depending.

Last year I started out connecting with only about 50% of shots on a normal day, some better some worse but even throughout the year I was getting noticeable better and started expecting to hit 6 if not 7 /10. My personal goal this year is to try and connect with 80% of shots (8/10 average on a stage). If the best guys drop any shots, thats gravy for my actual placement but it really has no influence on what I need to get done myself to be happy with my shooting.

Hope that helps

 

[morganlamprecht]

it wont include everything but im pretty sure i have most match books from each match ive shot the past couple years at home in a drawer...i can get the total round counts from them if you want

 

[anotherwannabe]

We can leave that drudgery as an exercise for the reader

 

[G700b]

I was just curious of what the top guys were averaging for hit percentage wise vs bottom guy to qualify for finale to see the gap.

I believe I read top 150 shooters will qualify for the 19’ finale. . Was that the case for previous years?