Bike To Work Contest: Cascade Bicycle Club Education Foundation

Primary Ranking Criteria are the factors used to rank riders in the contest. The Primary Ranking Criteria used for ranking riders on the Rider Rankings report page is always shown in underlined text in the title of the page.

Ranking riders involves selecting what is important about the achievements each rider has made. The number of rides biked, the number of days the rider biked, and the miles biked can all factor in to ranking the riders in the contest. The number of days biked and the number of trips biked are objective criteria that can be used to rank riders.

Arguably, in a contest that seeks to promote bicycling to work, the number of trips that you bike (round trips and half trips) would be very important, as would the number of days people committed to bicycling to work. Since there are a small number of days in the contest relative to the number of people in the contest, there will be lots of tie rankings if these criteria were the only criteria used. The ranked results need to account for the large number of ties expected, hence the additional ranking values (see below).

Miles traveled is certainly an indication of commitment but miles biked is also a function of the distance people live to their jobs, which is almost always fixed during the contest. The route to work is also generally fixed, that is, if people are following the rules and not including miles biked for errands, training or recreation. There certainly have been some cases of people moving during the contest, or of a change in job location (temporarily or permanently) but by and large the distance riders travel to and from work should not vary by much.

Finally, open questions remain about how to look at riders who vary their commutes for legitimate reasons. For example, a person living in Seattle and working in Redmond might regularly bike from home to Montlake and catch the bus across Lake Washington, and then ride from the East side of the lake to his/her job in Redmond. If, on a really nice day, that person chooses to ride the extra miles up around the North end of Lake Washington to Redmond, should that person still only log their "regular" miles to/from work for that trip? The debate marches on...

Secondary Ranking Criteria

Other factors about the riders, the teams, and the organizations the riders belong to can be used to rank results. These factors are fun to use to create mini contests within the larger contest.

For example, two or more rival organizations might choose to rank only their riders together. Women might want to see how they did against other women. Women captains might want to compare themselves. The combinations are almost endless!

Rankings Columns on the Rider Rankings Page

This section explains more about the first three columns in the results on the Rider Rankings Page.

Absolute Rank

If "Trips Biked, then by Days Biked" or "Days Biked, then by Trips Biked" were used for ranking riders, and Miles Biked were not factored in the rankings, there would be lots of tie rankings. For example in 2008 there were almost 200 people tied for 39th place in the ranking of: Trips Biked, then by Days Biked.

When using either of these ranking criteria (Trips/Days or Days/Trips), the additional ranking criteria of Miles Biked is used order riders tied at a given ranking.

Absolute Rank numbers riders in order of the Primary Ranking Criteria being displayed in the report and adds Miles Biked to order the riders. The Absolute Rank numbers will almost always increase sequentially and any given value for Absolute Rank will be repeated only if Miles Biked is the same for two or more riders. In case where two or more riders biked the exact same number of miles (this is rare but does happen, like where two people live, work, and bike together), those tying riders will have the same Absolute Rank number.

Real Rank

Real Rank indicates the true ranking position of riders with the same Primary Ranking Criteria (Trips then Days, Days then Trips, or just Miles). When the Primary Ranking Criteria is Miles Biked, The Absolute Rank and Real Rank columns will have the same numbers and in the case of a tie for miles, each rider will be listed in a random order.

When the Primary Ranking Criteria is Trips Biked then Days Biked or vice versa, the Real Rank column indicates how each rider ranks including all tie rankings. Because there are many many riders who all bike the same number of trips or days in the contest, there are many ties at each ranking. The 50th place rank might have over 250 ties!

Sub Rank

Because there are a large number of tie rankings when the Primary Ranking Criteria is Trips Biked then Days Biked or vice versa, the Sub Rank column was added to the report. Sub Rank lets you see how many riders tied for a given Real Rank value. If you page through the rankings to the 50th Real Rank position, you can look at the Sub Rank column to get a sense of how many people tied for 50th place. Here you would scroll the page to the first instance of "51" for the Real Rank column and look at the row immediately preceding. The Sub Rank value in that row is the number of people that tied for 50th place.