What is the KleinLine?

By: Zachary Klein and Ruchi Agarwal

WHAT is the problem?

Policy debate is one of the most competitive and rigorous activities out there and everyone in the community cares about their success. It’s natural for people who put in countless hours of work and dedication to want accurate feedback and validation for that work. Unfortunately, the current ranking systems (formal and informal) don’t satisfy this need. 

Bid Tracker – It simply doesn’t reflect the comparative strength of a team. Some teams can go to more tournaments than other teams, some tournaments are significantly easier to bid at, and luck is a huge element of whether or not a team will bid. For example, in a situation where a team with 7 bids only attended finals bid tournaments, while a team with 3 bids attended only octofinals bid tournaments, bid count is likely to be an inaccurate estimate of which team is better. 

NDCA Points – This is better because it values all tournaments and doesn’t start the success meter at an arbitrary bid level, but it too has problems. Teams only get to count their top five tournament performances and the numerical formula is imperfect. Ultimately the points are arbitrary: geographic ratings, entry numbers, and prelim win count do not accurately reflect the strength of a tournament or a team.

The Coaches Poll – It has prestige, build rep, and is a fun concept, but it lacks objective accuracy. To be fair, the coaches poll is designed to be subjective because it leans on the expertise and wisdom of coaches, but unlike nationally televised football games, debate coaches rarely get to see other teams in action. There are also obvious political and competitive incentives that exist in this system. For example, coaches could increase the ranking of a team that beat their team, to make their debate team look better. If you want to eliminate bias, focus on the numbers. 

WHAT is the KleinLine? 

The KleinLine is an Elo rating system for high school policy debate. Most commonly associated with Chess, this advanced statical measurement is gaining popularity in professional sports and social media apps (it has also been developed for college policy). 
The Elo system rates players depending on the ratings of their opponents and the results scored against them. It accounts for every debate round in every tournament. If you lose to a better team, you lose fewer Elo points than if you lose to a worse team. The same process happens when you win: if you beat a better team, you gain more Elo points than if you beat a worse team. This makes your rating emblematic of the quality of teams that you have beaten and lost to. You can learn more about the equation and methodology here. In order to make it more accurate for a short debate season, the season is simulated 100 times.
The “line” mentioned on this site is the cutoff for national excellence. The Top 50 teams, according to our Elo rating, are above the line. Everyone else has work to do.

WHEN is the KleinLine? 

Every month!

WHO is the KleinLine?

Zachary Klein, a policy debater at Rowland Hall, created the elo debate ranking program. He enjoys programming and math. This system took countless hours to create and relied on a lot of coding. Ruchi Agarwal is responsible for the website design and creative applications. She will be creating other content coming soon!

HOW does the KleinLine work?

Future posts will break down the methodology, but I’m not sure anyone cares. Everyone just wants hot takes!