Japan is stronger than China?

[kvasir]

The reason why I count a pro that was born in one country but became pro in another as half for both is [...]

It is up to you if you like to build this statistics but I think if you choose this way you need to investigate the background of all of the players not only the players in Japan. This is maybe the main problem with your approach, that you need to decide for each player what connection they have to different countries. I think this can be hard to do in practice.

[illluck]

This is such a fundamentally flawed calculation that I think you need to restart and use "Go playing population" instead of total population. If a reasonable estimate for that cannot be obtained you just admit defeat and try another approach.

[Knotwilg]

A metric where the population is in the denominator will easily be unfavorable to China or India.
The numerator is usually affected by conditions other than sheer population, such as a (self imposed) numerus clausus of participants selected into major international tournaments.

In the world of table tennis, which I today know a little better than Go, there is an undeniable dominance of China. In the world top 100, China has "only" 9 players which is half the expected value of the 18% of the population. However, if you look at the top 10, China has 5 players, which is 3 times the expected value.

Indeed, China can for example only select 4 players for the Olympics (singles), the most important tournament, or the yearly world championships. Furthermore, China's highly government sponsored program only leaves room for the absolute top. China's domestic tournaments are considered stronger than international ones and the Chinese selection tournament for the Olympics is probably the heaviest competition world wide - although the mental pressure on the eventual representatives to deliver is enormous. There's no room for failure.

So, I have all kinds of anecdotic/qualitative arguments to prove Chinese overachievement in this sport, while a stat including the long tail of professionals will not support the idea.

I don't know if the same story holds in Go - as said, I haven't follow the international scene so much over the past decade.

[illluck]

This is such a fundamentally flawed calculation that I think you need to restart and use "Go playing population" instead of total population. If a reasonable estimate for that cannot be obtained you just admit defeat and try another approach.

A metric where the population is in the denominator will easily be unfavorable to China or India.

Coming across this post again, I think the methodology (with total population) does measure something - I don't think "strong" is the right description. "Popularity" would be Go playing population over total population. "Sophistication" or maybe "development" would be proportion of top players over Go playing population. What would the right term for proportion top players over total population? Then again, maybe it doesn't give anything more useful over the first two numbers so there is no term for it?

[Elom0]

This is such a fundamentally flawed calculation that I think you need to restart and use "Go playing population" instead of total population. If a reasonable estimate for that cannot be obtained you just admit defeat and try another approach.

A metric where the population is in the denominator will easily be unfavorable to China or India.

Coming across this post again, I think the methodology (with total population) does measure something - I don't think "strong" is the right description. "Popularity" would be Go playing population over total population. "Sophistication" or maybe "development" would be proportion of top players over Go playing population. What would the right term for proportion top players over total population? Then again, maybe it doesn't give anything more useful over the first two numbers so there is no term for it?

Strength.

Sophistion says that 'a random go player in country W compared to count. Of course, this is an oversimplification but that's the basic idea. So skew If a top pro decided to become a citizen of Antarctica is will have the highest skew, but unless it's it doesn't necessarily it has the highest level of human go. So the term sophistication may be trying to attribute something that doesn't quite fit, I'm not sure . . .

Popularity of course, is go players over everyone in the population. You could make a metric that takesinto account investment into the game. So if in one country half the people play go but they are twice as passionate that would mean go is just as 'popular'. I kind of did this in Random Ramblings viewtopic.php?p=236183#p236183 . I mean lot's of people file taxes but I wouldn't say it's popular as a hobby.

STRENGTH is Popularity multipled by 'Spophistication' or' High-Level Skew'. STRENGTH = POPULARITY * HIGH-LEVEL SKEW

HIGH*LEVEL SKEW = PASSION * ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MEANS FOR ADVANCEMENT

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MEANS FOR ADVANCEMENT = ECONOMIC FORTUNE * POPULARITY. So HIGH-
LEVEL SKEW is not an independent variable.

I think much of the squirmishness towards my method is because it directly places economic conditions as part of the deciding factor on how good the go scene in a country is. You could have loads of passionate go players, like in Beijing-controlled China, but if they cannot afford their hobbies becuase they are poor farmers then the go scene in your country is still poor, as far as I am concerned. The best thing the PRC could do for go in the part of China they control is to continue their noble drive to raise the standard of living and stop china being a poor country, in my opinion, apart of course from from copying Korea (with help from their own and the great Rui Naiwei) and now Japan's improvement in women's go, since in my opinion helping the women's game is the #1 way to make any sport popular long term for infinite reasons, no matter what anyone tells you (if they tell you otherwise, they are wrong. Plain and Simple, haha!)!

With regards to Knotwilg's point:

A metric where the population is in the denominator will easily be unfavorable to China or India.
The numerator is usually affected by conditions other than sheer population, such as a (self imposed) numerus clausus of participants selected into major international tournaments.

In the world of table tennis, which I today know a little better than Go, there is an undeniable dominance of China. In the world top 100, China has "only" 9 players which is half the expected value of the 18% of the population. However, if you look at the top 10, China has 5 players, which is 3 times the expected value.

Indeed, China can for example only select 4 players for the Olympics (singles), the most important tournament, or the yearly world championships. Furthermore, China's highly government sponsored program only leaves room for the absolute top. China's domestic tournaments are considered stronger than international ones and the Chinese selection tournament for the Olympics is probably the heaviest competition world wide - although the mental pressure on the eventual representatives to deliver is enormous. There's no room for failure.

So, I have all kinds of anecdotic/qualitative arguments to prove Chinese overachievement in this sport, while a stat including the long tail of professionals will not support the idea.

I don't know if the same story holds in Go - as said, I haven't follow the international scene so much over the past decade.

Thanks very muchfor the very interesting point! On table tennis, the coolest physical sport, I guess that would seem to me to be a flaw of the rating system no? Your point seems to be that the rating system used by the International Table Tennis Association is incorrect, in that their top 100 is not the 'real' top 100. It wasn't designed to reflect accurate ratings, but rather be a tool mainly between people who regularly appear in international events to know people they're actually more likely to play, so it's more like a list of '100 high-level table tennis players who play often enough internationally'. And I don't think Of course Or I don't think Goratings or Mamumamu would have that problem to that degree since go tournaments aren't organised like footbal or table tennis tournaments, and they don't use a non-statistical system like in the official tennis ratings--that's why I don't pay much attention to it, but rather stastical ones that don't idiotically--sorry to them for my harshness-- use seperate scales for men and women, which makes absolutely no sense in any sport, to the point where I think it's an abomination and insult to all intelligence everywhere, but especially tennis and golf and even more so in table tennis--the almighty abomination!.

*One may say, but my analysis of psychology and experience tells me that for sure the current effect is that it actually says women are sooooooooo bad they need a separate rating scale like their children or some burden and the men in the sport are sooooo nice to even bother with them. A way to talk down to women and ensure a major subconscious inferiority placebo**. And because it's subconscious, and therefore faster and more powerful yet more illogical, they may have this subconscious effect going on their brain while their conscious mind thinks it's having a positive effect.

**And I can get into a whole angry rant about people subconsciously deliberately doing this sort of thing while in their conscious mind thinks they're trying to be good, but this point has already skewed way off topic, haha .

[Polama]

Thanks very muchfor the very interesting point! On table tennis, the coolest physical sport, I guess that would seem to me to be a flaw of the rating system no?

Elo-like algorithms can definitely have scaling issues between subpopulations that don't frequently play each other. I've seen it in online games where opponents of a particular rank are noticeably weaker at off hours of the day. Essentially, if group A rarely plays group B and is noticeably stronger, then group B is slowly "giving" elo points to group A, but at a lower rate than the internal turnover of players joining and retiring within each group.

Also: Looking at go ratings, and an old conversation on this forum (forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=580) it appears there's roughly equal number of pro's in each country (+/- 25% maybe), around 300ish. If we use a simple model like "professionals should be 3 standard deviations above the general population", then each country should have a professional population proportional to the go playing population. However, it's interesting that this in the same general vicinity as non-bench baseball players (450), an estimate I randomly found of people able to live directly off tennis winnings (200), etc. Also in the vicinity of Dunbar's number. It might be that this is the limit of players the biggest fans can individually keep track of. It might be an organizational limit.

If it's the case that number of professionals is sublinear with population size, we'd expect the training programs to also be sublinear. There's a fixed number of professionals to teach, there's a higher risk of discouragement since a severe bottleneck is ahead.

If we could perfectly predict future strength of each child, none of those bottlenecks would matter. But realistically, players in high population community who would go on to be the best are culled out prematurely because there isn't space further along for them. So a priori we'd expect the quality of the player funnel to be better in large populations than small populations, but not directly proportional to the size difference.

[illluck]

It might just be me attributing additional meanings to the word "strength", but I generally consider strength to be absolute rather than per capita if that makes sense. Kind of "quantity has a quality all its own" sort of thing.

[Knotwilg]

On table tennis, the coolest physical sport, I guess that would seem to me to be a flaw of the rating system no? Your point seems to be that the rating system used by the International Table Tennis Association is incorrect, in that their top 100 is not the 'real' top 100.

That is not my point but you are right about this: The top 100 does not show the strongest 100 players in the world. I is "a tool mainly between people who regularly appear in international events to know people they're actually more likely to play, so it's more like a list of '100 high-level table tennis players who play often enough internationally"

This is the correct description of any individual sport's ranking. It measures what it can measure.

It is probably more "flawed" in table tennis than in tennis, because of the Chinese selection mechanisms and the ITTF restrictions on national representatives. In tennis, golf or Formula 1, it's definitely skewed towards wealth, since only middle class, upper class or the 0,00001% can cough up the money to even participate.

You see, this debate quickly ramifies. A pro/pop metric will be skewed towards countries with smaller populations, higher wealth, bigger government programs and be affected by ruling on national representation.

[Elom0]

It's very unlikely for any ranking to be perfect, but I think goratings and mamumamu are close enough to the *actual* truth. Nothing like the ITT 'rankings', haha.

In addition, I'd say the bottleneck problem is a sign of bad management of large populations. It would be best to split up the pros and make headquarters in each province, but when everything is centralised you're going to miss good kids. Especially in a poor large country like Beijing's section. Unfortunately, humans tend to think bigger is better while taking the same skilled humans evolved for small populations of less than 1000 and applying to. This is something I don't like, the monotomisation of human experience except in the one thing you want, human rights: first it was every using the same few search engine and using the same sites that would appear at the top of any search, then it was everybody using the same social media apps, and things like that. This is just one reason I'm skeptical of large countries as a concept, unless maybe each state has a lot of independence like maybe the US to some degree . . .

And of course, the metric I'm measuring is Strength per Capita, just like GDP per capita. It's a lot more of an objective calulation than strength over something as ambiguous as 'go-playing population'--what defines the difference between someone who is a go--unless you do what I said and rate go-'playingness' on a continuos scalefrom low-passion (a couple of games a year--to high passion (playing every day). In any case one of my major pet peeves is when humans take things that are continuos and rush to treat them as black-and-white and discrete and treat poor justifications for doing so as valid just to pretend they know something they don't.

On the note of over-simplifying things, yes I would like to and should use smaller fractions and analyse each players background, and might do so in my more advanced chart. So maybe Nakamura Sumire will factor 0.2 or something into Korea. However, it would be pretentious of me to deem that one can actually determine what degree of influence each type of exposure or training should be valued at. In addition, things like a top pro playing in a foreign league probably don't count since that's likely inevitable if one gets strong enough. I guess what I've done so far isn't overly-simplistic for my initial purposes, and as far as I can tell I'm not oversimplifying just to pretend the world fits into a black-and-white conception in my head, or encouraging others to do so, which is the real problem, not fake news haha (fake news relies on people first wanting dumbed-down news, but this is never addressed in the mainstream .

My point in comparing countries per capita is to prove the large disparity in effectiveness between different nations in popularising and developing go--and a richer country likely means more development--, which is hidden when you just compare countries in absolute terms. I also deeply despise comparing countries in absolute ways. If a country is five times larger and it's compared absolutely, it's often done in a way that implies the people in the larger country are 1/5th the worth of someone in the smaller country. Koreans have been as good as China at go not because they're genetically 30 times better at go, but because they're many times richer and their mums thought go was great, among other factors. The west would do kindly to tone down their yapping to large third-world countries when their total carbon footprint per capita accumulated over recorded history--the only metric that actually matters--is many times higher.