Discussion: USOF ranking formula

Is there anyone who can enlighten me on how USOF (or AP) rankings work? I've read the explanation at OUSA, but there seems to be a step missing: Course Difficulty is calculated as the average Personal Course Difficulty, but for the calculation to become circular, the Course Difficulty has to be fed back into individual ranking points somehow.

Thanks,

A.

There was a long (sometimes heated) discussion of the ranking methodology a few years ago, in this thread. You don't need all the drama, the third post (by jjcote) provides your answer.

As far as I can see, the simplest step of how to calculate "Daily Ranking" in the first place isn't given. There's lots of detail about iterations and harmonic means, but not how to get started. Maybe so obvious to the cognoscenti that they forgot to mention it?

Something like " ranking points = course difficulty/time " (or whatever it actually is) seems to be missing

http://www.us.orienteering.org/rules#F

I don't know if this is any better, but it may be:
http://www.usof-rankings.org/rslt/rankings_methodo...

It's somewhat hard to follow that discussion since whyjustrun apparently no longer exists, nor do her posts.

@vmeyer: it is. Thanks a lot!