Scored to Match

A Field Survey of Whether a Country Show's Produce-Judging Rubric Moves a Ranking, or Just Records It

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement surveys 47 produce judges across 19 regional show societies, comparing each judge's sealed pre-scoring expectation against their completed scoresheet for 312 judged classes. First place matches exactly in 88% of classes, a judge's walk-in confidence predicts the eventual scoresheet margin closely, and an ablation finds requiring every rubric column does not measurably change how often the two agree.

@misc{slop_a7p1c3,
  author       = {Casimir Beng and Dagny Okafor and Thandiwe Solberg},
  title        = {Scored to Match: A Field Survey of Whether a Country Show's Produce-Judging Rubric Moves a Ranking, or Just Records It},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.a7p1c3},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-surveying-a-country-a7p1c3/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}