Do you do better in competitions or at home?

[JustinTimeCuber]

A lot of people say that they don't do as well in competitions because they get nervous. However, I've always gotten good times at competitions. For instance:

UIUC Spring 2013: Expected AVG: 29-30s Competition AVG: 27.34 R1, 26.75 R2
Indiana 2014: Expected AVG: 22-24s Competition AVG: 20.68 R1
Lawrence Open 2014: Expected AVG: 18-20s Competition AVG: 18.76 R1, 16.98 R2
Lawrence Spring 2015: Expected AVG: 17-18s Competition AVG: 16.23 R1, 15.03 R2

This is partially because I don't really get nervous at competitions, and if I do, it is only for my first solve overall and maybe my first solve in 3x3 R1.

Does anyone else have this happen to them? Or do you do significantly worse in competitions? Or maybe you don't really have any significant difference?

 

[AlphaSheep]

My first comp, I got a 28 average when I averaged 33 at home. In my second comp, I got a 31 average when I averaged 27 at home. In my third comp, I got a 25 average when I averaged 25 at home...

So basically, my answer to your question is that it varies.

 

[LucidCuber]

The obvious answer would be better at home, but in reality sometimes it's not always like that. Look what happened with Ciaran's 7x7 solve of 2:54 in competition, despite never having a sub-3 at home.

I've also gotten a few overall PB's in competition too like a PLL skip megaminx solve.

 

[Ninja Storm]

In competition, 100%.

My official 3x3 average has been ~1 second faster than my personal best avg100 at home for about 3 years now.

 

[Hssandwich]

It depends, sometimes I get averages that break really significant barriers for me that I weren't expecting to break, like my 3.86 Pyraminx average, however... My home skewb average is so much better than my official average 1.5s, which is a lot when you get fast, and every time I try to beat it, I fail horribly.

 

[bobthegiraffemonkey]

I usually do better at BLD at home than in comp, with a couple of exceptions, I especially struggle with the focus needed for multiBLD. Quite a few times for other events I've set overall PBs by a considerable margin in comp. I think that a combination of now being fairly relaxed in comp combined with just enough pressure to make me fully focused on solving helps a lot, and sometimes it comes together nicely. I remember taking about 25s off my 7x7 single in comp once, haven't came close to that time again.

 

[Chree]

I do better at events that don't rely very heavily on inspection time... I'm always afraid of getting a +2 or DNFing because of over inspection, so I barely inspect at all. Because of that, my 2x2 and 3x3 times suffer in competition.

But for big cubes, it's easier for me to find a good start during inspection, so I actually do really well in competition with those. At my first comp, I set my PB single in 4x4... it took me months to beat it at home.

Also, competition settings/conditions really help me focus. At home I can be pretty easily distracted. So there's that too.

 

[TDM]

I tend to do better, since it's pretty much the only time I fully concentrate on solving as fast as possible. Most of the time I'm not too bothered about what I get. The exception is 2x2 and 3x3 where pressure makes me do a lot worse.

 

[mDiPalma]

anyone who voted for either of the first 2 options..

a) is wrong
b) is lying
c) is comparing their "competition PBs" to "much larger at-home averages" (apples to oranges)
or d) does the majority of their solves in competition.

 

[JustinTimeCuber]

anyone who voted for either of the first 2 options..

a) is wrong
b) is lying
c) is comparing their "competition PBs" to "much larger at-home averages" (apples to oranges)
or d) does the majority of their solves in competition.

or e) actually does better in competitions. I got 4 sub-15s at Lawrence Spring 2015 out of 10 solves, which normally I would hardly ever get.

Don't just tell people that they are wrong or lying based on minimal evidence.

Edit: At the same competition, I got an 11.90, which was my 3rd best time EVER, even though I only had 10 chances to get that good of a solve. Besides, look at my original post. It happens at all four of my comps, and I only got a sort-of normal average for one round of one competition.

 

[TDM]

anyone who voted for either of the first 2 options..

a) is wrong
b) is lying
c) is comparing their "competition PBs" to "much larger at-home averages" (apples to oranges)
or d) does the majority of their solves in competition.

e) is different to you

Isn't people being different the whole point of polls?

 

[JustinTimeCuber]

e) is different to you

Isn't people being different the whole point of polls?

Well said.

 

[Kit Clement]

Anytime someone uses that s-word, I have to bring statistics into this to make sure that what you're saying actually has significance.

I'll compare your individual times in competition against your reported at-home averages:

Data:

Expected ActualTime
1      29.5      27.69
2      29.5      32.41
3      29.5      24.80
4      29.5      26.66
5      29.5      27.66
6      29.5      25.41
7      29.5      29.22
8      29.5      26.19
9      29.5      28.66
10     29.5      24.86
11     23.0      24.13
12     23.0      19.93
13     23.0      19.56
14     23.0      22.53
15     23.0      19.58
16     19.0      17.21
17     19.0      23.05
18     19.0      22.52
19     19.0      16.55
20     19.0      15.93
21     19.0      15.48
22     19.0      22.44
23     19.0      17.74
24     19.0      15.60
25     19.0      17.59
26     17.5      16.26
27     17.5      14.40
28     17.5      16.90
29     17.5      15.52
30     17.5      17.97
31     17.5      13.62
32     17.5      14.83
33     17.5      16.64
34     17.5      17.40
35     17.5      11.90

Paired t-test results:

	Paired t-test

data:  Expected and ActualTime
t = 3.9502, df = 34, p-value = 0.0001867
alternative hypothesis: true difference in means is greater than 0
95 percent confidence interval:
 0.9177164       Inf
sample estimates:
mean of the differences 
               1.604571

What we can gather from this is that if it were really true that you did just as well in competition as at home, there is a 0.019% chance that you obtained these good times by pure coincidence. Pretty strong evidence to say that you perform well in competitions. However, this does make a strong assumption in the fact that you are reporting what you truly averaged at the time.

Thing is, that individual times don't represent how well you performed, your averages do. So we can also treat the averages as a single result and see if those are significantly different.

Expected ActualAvg
1     29.5     27.34
2     29.5     26.75
3     23.0     20.68
4     19.0     18.76
5     19.0     16.98
6     17.5     16.23
7     17.5     15.03

And the results of the paired t-test here:

	Paired t-test

data:  Expected and ActualAvg
t = 5.8014, df = 6, p-value = 0.000575
alternative hypothesis: true difference in means is greater than 0
95 percent confidence interval:
 1.256949      Inf
sample estimates:
mean of the differences 
                   1.89

So not quite as overwhelming -- 0.05%, but that's still convincing. So yeah, if you are reporting what your real global averages were at the time, it would seem that you are performing significantly better than you do at home.

 

[JustinTimeCuber]

<A whole bunch of statistics stuff here>

I'm pretty sure that what I said for what I got at home was pretty accurate. My 16.23 Ao5 may have partially been effected by the fact that I think Chris Olson didn't give me a +2 when I'm pretty sure the layer was off by ~47 degrees. That was still below my expected average, though.

 

[mDiPalma]

or e) actually does better in competitions. I got 4 sub-15s at Lawrence Spring 2015 out of 10 solves, which normally I would hardly ever get.

Don't just tell people that they are wrong or lying based on minimal evidence.

Edit: At the same competition, I got an 11.90, which was my 3rd best time EVER, even though I only had 10 chances to get that good of a solve. Besides, look at my original post. It happens at all four of my comps, and I only got a sort-of normal average for one round of one competition.

So you got your 3rd best time ever at a competition. That means you're faster at home.
You got these averages in competition: 16.23 R1, 15.03 R2. Your PB average is 14.16. That means you're faster at home.

Where is your evidence that you're faster in competition, again?

You may FEEL that you're faster, but the stats don't show it, nor (I argue) will they show that for most people (especially not on the order of 10% improvement). You may point to the fact that your competition avg5 is less than your at-home avg100. But did you know that around half of the 'avg5's in your PB avg100 are faster than your PB avg100? That's usually how averages work.

Here is what you said before the competition:

My goals:
2x2: Sub 5 single, Sub 7 average, make the second round?
3x3: Sub 15 single, Sub 17 average, make the second round.
4x4: Wait... there is no 4x4.
5x5: Sub 165 single, Sub 180 average
Pyraminx: Sub 10 single, Sub 15 average
Skewb: Sub 15 single, Sub 20 average

The fact that you achieved all of these goals by a large margin can mean 1 of 2 things:

1) You set goals for yourself that were really quite hard, and you ACTUALLY perform better in competition than at home, and miraculously beat all 10 goals by a large margin (unlikely, especially considering the large positive difference between your goals and actual at-home averages).
2) You set somewhat EASY goals for yourself, met them all, and are now psychologically convinced that because you beat your low expectations that you perform better at competition than at home.


I'd be interested to know the amount of people with official times in competition that are 10% less than their at-home equivalent PBs (not counting events that people do more often at competitions than at home).

 

[TDM]

I'm pretty sure that what I said for what I got at home was pretty accurate. My 16.23 Ao5 may have partially been effected by the fact that I think Chris Olson didn't give me a +2 when I'm pretty sure the layer was off by ~47 degrees. That was still below my expected average, though.

If you think it's a +2, why not argue that it was a +2? You're allowed to disagree with the judge's decision.

 

[mDiPalma]

e) is different to you

Isn't people being different the whole point of polls?

...

Allow me to translate the first poll option:

Is your competition PB >10% faster than your at-home PB?

Allow me to translate the second option:

Is your competition PB 2-10% faster than your at-home PB?


I seriously doubt that half of cubers have official PBs by such a large margin, as this poll suggests.

 

[Kit Clement]

I would consider a day where I perform well in competition would be if I perform better than my at-home (or global) average. Comparing my competition results to the best I've ever done at home is just unreasonable.

 

[TDM]

...

Allow me to translate the first poll option:

Is your competition PB >10% faster than your at-home PB?

Allow me to translate the second option:

Is your competition PB 2-10% faster than your at-home PB?


I seriously doubt that half of cubers have official PBs by such a large margin, as this poll suggests.

I'll admit I didn't fully read the poll before answering in it, but I don't think the numbers he gave were reasonable anyway - 10% is a huge difference, and I even though I do think I do significantly better in competitions, I don't think I'm 10% better. Imo the numbers aren't important.

I don't know where you got the idea of competition times being faster than overall PBs from though. It doesn't say anything about that in the OP or the poll.

 

[NewCuber000]

I'd say it varies greatly for me, and depends on the event. I'll show you what I mean.
At the time of my last comp:
2x2 - Global average: Sub-5.5
- official average: 5.02
-single: 2.28 (Not lol scramble)
- official Single 4.38 (Bad)
3x3: -Global: Sub-15
-Average of 5: 13.09 (0.2 from old PB ao5 with a DNF... I was in the zone)
-Single: 8.54
-official Single: 12.05
4x4: Global: Sub-1:12ish?
Average:1:01.xx (7 seconds better than at home Ao5)
Single: 59.xx
Official single: 48.52 (It's been a month after comp and my best home is 52 and i can't beat it!! 48 wasn't lucky besides no parity either..)
3x3BLD: -Mo3: 6:20.46
- Official Mo3: DNF XD
-Single: 4:50.89
-Official Single: DNF (Couldnt seem to concentrate!)
3x3OH: -Global: Sub-30
-Avg: 26.6x (Almost beat home Ao5)
-Single: 18.69 (PLL skip)
-Single: 24.97 (No skips)
Pyraminx: -Global: Sub-7.5
-Ao5:7.46 (I think? Roughly. Don't feel like checking
-Single: 2.31 (Like 7 moves, way too lucky)
- Official Single: 7.0x
Skewb: Lets just say I did badly... I was nervous on this one and because the way the skewb turns I could hardly turn it for some reason.