so in some events, like soccer, when its down to four teams or ppl, say a b c and d, it can to like this:
a beats b
c beats d
then in finals a beats c
and in bronze match, b beats d
c gets silver, b gets bronze
but look, c and b did not play each other, and had identical records, beating d and losing to a. so why should c get a higher medal? hasn't anyone noticed this?
Archived Comments (6)
Nope. You're the first one ;-)
I don't know of a better way to sort 4 teams with 4 games. Do you?
no. you need five games half the time.
Why just focus on the last two rounds?
There are too many teams and too few matches to perfectly determine an unambiguous ranking. So, they have to set up a system that doesn't do that, and cuts some corners.
In this case, it's just very important to win the semi-final match and if you draw the best team as your opponent, then you're screwed.
But, consider that the third best team might not even make it to the semi-final round, because it had to play the first and second best teams in earlier rounds and has been eliminated.
Unfortunately, the luck of the draw matters.
focus on last two rounds makes point easier to illustrate
and also its only b/c of bronze medal match that the IDENTICAL RECORDS claim comes in. other screwed teams never show in the matches actually played they were screwed.
A resolution here would be to simply eliminate the silver & bronze medals.
Or, have a final match between b and c in these cases.
I suspect that they don't think it's worth it. There isn't that much interest in distinguishing between second and third place to have such matches.