Ian Jamieson wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 12:33 pm
Players and administrators appear to have forgotten (or not know) that Elo once stated the process of rating players was in any case rather approximate; he compared it to “the measurement of a cork bobbing up and down on the surface of agitated water with a yard stick tied to a rope and which is swaying in the wind” Chess Life 1962. (I have tried to see if it also appears in the rating of Chessplayers past&present by Elo but I haven’t found it yet, not that it matters as the quote should be well known, certainly by people running or putting forward proposals for changes to rating systems.)
I thought I had seen the quote in the rating of chess players past&present. In my version it (or a comparable version of it) is in section 2.53 in the section on reliability of the ratings on pages 40-43.
“In ratings, we are measuring a quantity undergoing
continual change from day to day, even from game to game, in both a random and possibly a systematic fashion. Furthermore, this measurement is just a comparison to the performances of the opponents, which are also changing in these manners. The process may be compared to using a meter stick waving in the wind to measure the position of a cork bobbing on the surface of waving water. The exact position of the cork cannot be stated, but one can give the
probable range in which it may be found. The same can be said of ratings.
Horace Lamb’s remarks on measurements in general apply most appropriately to chess ratings in particular: “ The more refined the methods employed, the more vague and elusive does the supposed magnitude become; the judgment flickers and waves, until at last, in a sort of despair,
some result is put down, not in the belief it is exact, but with the feeling that it is the best we can make out of the matter.” (Lamb 1904)”
Lamb H.
Presidential Address, British Association, Nature, Vol. 70, 372, 1904.