I am, as some are aware, presently researching the attack rates of athletes in the 2008 Olympic Judo tournament in Beijing. To do this I am notating the attacks made by each athlete and analyzing the results. As with many forms of analysis there are issues to be addressed around the calidity of the data. One of which is how accurate your recording is, in this post I would like to invite you to help my project by notating a short video from YouTube and emailing me your result, this will be helpful so I can see what the variations in the data are. I shall post the findings of this experiment afterwards.

Notation Methodology:

Take a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle of the page and notate as follows:

On the paper based hand notation form each attack will be recorded as a vertical line “|” if the
opponent does not touch the floor with another part of the body other than the feet. A “+” will be
recorded if the attack does cause the opponent to touch the floor with another part of their body but
no score is given. The form has two columns, one for each player, the “|” is placed in the
appropriate column for each player. If a score was given, no “|” is marked,  a letter indicating the
score is written instead. These are K for Koka,  Y for Yuko, W for Wazari, I for Ippon and P for a
penalty. When Matte was called, the recorder moves down one line on the notation form. If no
attack has been made a horizontal line is recorded “-”, is neither player has attacked, then both
columns have a “-” recorded. Each period between the referee’s “Hajime” call and “Matte” call is
termed a segment and recorded on a separate line on the form.

If you could forward your notation to me (lw@judocoach.com) that would be terrific, it will be interesting to see how many people participate and also how much the data varys between people. I shall keep your data anonymous of course.

Many Thanks,

Lance.