Deductions

The philosophy behind deductions is to level the playing field by removing any score advantage that was gained by infringing the rules. Since a team's scaled scores are ultimately defined by the scores of other teams, there is no way for an Appraisal Team to always know exactly how much to deduct before scores are scaled.

Therefore, deductions are divided into two categories:

Item-specific deductions related to either an individual appraised item or a group of items
Other deductions that are not item-specific, but often are identified with a team's attitude or general behavior.

Item-specific Deductions

In both Team Challenge and Instant Challenge scoring, it is possible to assign deductions to individual items or groups of items. This permits the appraisal team to assign a deduction value appropriate to offset the scoring advantage the team may have gained by infringing the rules. These deductions can be specified as a specific number of points to be removed from the team's earned points (before scaling) or as a percentage (%) of the team's earned points for that scoring item. If you enter a number of points that is greater than the score awarded by the Appraisers for that item, you will receive an error message and will not be permitted to continue with that size of deduction. Similarly you may not enter a percentage deduction greater than 100%.

Other Deductions

Deductions entered as "other" will be deducted from a team's final scaled score. In the case of Team Challenge scores, where the scaled score is never less than the raw score (it's just not possible for a team to receive more than 240 out of 240 raw score points!), the effect of deducting a certain number of points in this manner is never greater than deducting the same number of raw score points before scaling. If you enter an "Other Deduction" for more than 20 points, the Program will comment that this is unusual - not prohibited - and you may continue to assess that deduction by simply selecting "Yes" that you wish to continue with that Other Deduction value. This message may also remind the Score Room that a special approval may be required if such a large Other Deduction is to be applied.

Beware:
"Other deductions" from the team challenge are automatically added to "Other deductions" from the instant challenge. Entering these deductions twice will result in two separate deductions!