Is it possible to get negative elo

I suppose you could report log ELO to make it more tenable also sillier , but the fact remains that there's no mathematical bound, so there's no guarantee that all ELOs will stay within the range you're looking for.

Perhaps the most pertinent question of all is, why? What do you gain from compressing Elo down to three ish digits? It diminishes slightly your ability to distinguish between players of similar ratings, but what is the upside? Or, why not compress it down to between one and one hundred, or zero and one? It's all the same values; "three digits" is quite arbitrary, and I can't think of any way that it "improves" on the current system.

I suppose it is possible to change the rating scale. But, not all players are necessarily between I've seen plenty of players that have a rating below In the last tournament I played, I saw a kid ranked who one round happened to beat a I don't think it is desirable to have players ranked negative, so let's just say we take the current rating and divide by 2.

It's also not guaranteed that players will always be ranked less than , in fact, it is likely we will see a player achieve that rating soon.

Magnus Carlsen's peak rating was and not too far in the past no player had achieved But, for us regular players we would see ratings in the range Other nations have different rating systems on a different scale. Personally, I like a little more resolution in my rating than that, but the scale is mostly arbitrary. In the end, you either have a bit more precision or less digits. Either way is not too difficult.

What would improve it is requiring people to play more frequently or lose points and also normalizing the average every 6 months or more so that the average is always at a fixed number. I used as the average in the 60s when I was doing ratings and the ratings went from 0 to Nobody ever got close to zero and nobody got close to so that worked well for us.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Is it possible to improve the Elo rating system like this? Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 5 months ago. Active 1 year, 8 months ago. Viewed 1k times. What do you think? Is there something obvious that I missed or am I really right? Improve this question.

Fate Fate 4, 1 1 gold badge 25 25 silver badges 64 64 bronze badges. What should I do? Can you help me? Thanks in advance! You say below that you don't want Elo to become negative. Then you can't start at 0. Yes, that's right. But even starting at or so doesn't prevent numbers from becoming negative, does it? Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. In short: Provisional rankings. Andrew Andrew 6, 2 2 gold badges 26 26 silver badges 37 37 bronze badges.

Thank you very much! So I can give every player starting points. But new players have just a provisional score for the first X games. Correct so far? In these X games, they only gain or lose points as normal but their opponents don't. Yes, exactly. Then after a few provisional games thy should have a rating which roughly reflects their true ability. Upgrade them to normal player status, with this rating and from then on treat them the same as everyone else. But the starting value is still a difficult point.

By choosing either very weak opponents or quite strong opponents - depending on whether the starting is higher or lower than the average - I can have a strong influence on my starting value after X games.

Can't I? And what to do with negative ratings? Allow them? Or just don't change the rating if it would become negative? Well this is the same ELO system that is used in chess and they don't get negative ratings. If you start at the same starting point you shouldn't either. The further you move from the average the harder it becomes to keep moving away, there is an effective limit. It would be extremely difficult and I doubt it will ever happen.

Show 6 more comments. This site used the elo rating system. Stig Brautaset 2, 1 1 gold badge 21 21 silver badges 38 38 bronze badges. Kieran Kieran 16k 6 6 gold badges 42 42 silver badges 51 51 bronze badges. Many systems give newcomers higher K values in order that they find their level more quickly. Elliott Manley Elliott Manley 41 3 3 bronze badges. Hope that helps. Alok Singhal Alok Singhal Thank you. I want to use the Elo algorithm.

That's sure. But I don't know where to start: 0 or any positive number e. I haven't looked at the Glicko system in a lot of detail, but it deals with the shortcomings of the Elo algorithm. It's a tricky problem: good luck!

New idea: The starting value for the Elo score is always the current average. So if I have users with 0, , and , the fifth user will get to start. Would this be good? I think you're better off with either injection of points, or with a variable K-factor, or with a combination of both. Statistically, I can't prove yet if your method takes care of inflation or deflation.

By the way, Glicko system is Elo's algorithm, but also has a reliability factor, so in principle you could use it. It seems that it's already used in many places. Do players see this score? Will the players understand Elo? Will players continue to play if their score becomes negative? Jarrett Meyer Jarrett Meyer Players see the score since it is the main criterion for the player ranking. No publicar tales resultados representa un desperdicio de recursos de tiempo, dinero y esfuerzos.

The academic community is constantly under pressure to obtain funding for their research and, after finalizing them, to publish the results obtained. This process improves scientific knowledge and brings benefits to the researchers that, with this, get greater credibility, better academic positions and guarantee the continuity of resources for their projects 1 1.

Fanelli D. Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries. The growing competition in Brazilian science: rites of passage, stress and burnout. Angell M. Publish or perish: a proposal. Ann Intern Med. Lawrence PA. The politics of publication: authors, reviewers and editors must act to protect the quality of research.

Nature [Internet]. Rev Bras Cir Cardiovasc [Internet]. The publish or perish policy induces the association of scientific productivity with academic success and threatens researchers, and can also distort knowledge, particularly when the results obtained are not what was expected.

Still, it is necessary to always publish, looking for high impact periodicals 3 3. Competition should not prevent the scientific community from publishing any results, since producing and disseminating knowledge is the ultimate and desired goal of science. Researchers must be accountable to society, to the academic or charitable service to which they belong, and to the sponsors of the studies. In addition to these inherent aspects of academic responsibility, the publication of negative results can accelerate studies on a given topic, avoiding efforts to be undertaken when it is already known that the expected result will not be obtained.

The publication of unexpected or negative results entails extra difficulties for the researcher. Many emphasize, explore, and discuss positive results, failing to document negative results that are then considered insignificant 6 6.

Parasuraman S. Prospective on publishing negative results. J Pharm Negat Results [Internet]. A decade of reversal: an analysis of contradicted medical practices.

Mayo Clin Proc [Internet]. A call for greater power in an era of publishing negative results. Acta Med Acad [Internet]. However, publishing these results is important because observing the mistakes already made always brings some learning and saves time and resources; and evaluating only selected results can lead us to the wrong conclusions 9 9.

Reversals of established medical practices: evidence to abandon ship. Teixeira da Silva JA. Negative results: negative perceptions limit their potential for increasing reproducibility. J Negat Results Biomed [Internet]. Failure to publish unexpected or negative results is of concern to scientific knowledge 11 Knight J. Negative results: null and void. Considering the need to better discuss this issue and clarify possible ethical doubts, the objective of this study was to evaluate what medical students and physicians think about the publication of unexpected or negative results and discuss the ethical aspects involved in the issue.

All study participants signed a free and informed consent form. This is an exploratory cross-cut study conducted through questionnaires with open and closed questions to evaluate the knowledge about the habit of reading scientific articles, previous participation in clinical research and writing of scientific articles, the importance of publishing negative results and ethical aspects of the dissemination of such results.

Data collected from the questionnaire applied to the study sample were tabulated in the Excel program and analyzed statistically with the GrapPad Prism software version 6. Physicians had a mean of Students had a mean of All respondents, except one student, reported reading scientific articles in the medical field frequently, with