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Explanation of Statistics

ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ uses many abbreviations in its reports of tournaments’ results and statistics. An explanation of each abbreviation’s meaning, and the applications of each statistic, follows.

Depending on the gameplay rules used at a tournament and on the completeness of the results sent to us by the host, not all statistics are available for all tournaments.

W-L or W-L-T: Win-Loss(-Tie) Record
This number represents the proportion of the teams a team played that it won. It is the primary statistic used in determining a team’s placement during preliminary rounds, and in tournaments with no playoff re-bracketing, the final placement.
%: Winning Percentage
This is essentially the win-loss record expressed as a single number. It is calculated as the number of games a team won, divided by the total number of games it played. If the tournament allows ties, those are counted as half a win.
Points
The total number of points a team scored throughout a tournament, including tossups, bonuses, and—if the tournament allowed them—bonus bouncebacks, worksheet rounds, and lightning rounds.
The version of this statistic for individual players includes only points on tossups.
TUH: Tossups Heard
The total number of tossup questions a team or player had the opportunity to answer. For tournaments using untimed rounds, teams will usually have the same number of tossups heard. For timed tournaments, this number can vary significantly.
This number is used to normalize calculations like PPTUH (see below) to account for the fact that some teams may have had more opportunities to score points than other teams did.
GP: Games Played
This is the number of games that an individual player appeared in during a tournament. No regard is given to how much of the game the player played—hearing one tossup is the same as hearing all of them.
P: Powers
The number of tossup questions that a team or player answered correctly early enough in the question to receive extra points. (Not all tournaments offer powers.)
TU: Regular Tossups
The number of tossup questions that a team or player answered correctly but not early enough to earn power points.
I: Interrupts
The number of tossup questions that a team or player answered incorrectly before the question was over (and before the other team did so), earning a penalty. These are also called “negs.” (Not all tournaments penalize incorrect interrupts.)
PPB: Points Per Bonus (also called Bonus Conversion)
The number of points that a team scored on bonuses, divided by the number of bonuses heard.
In ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ rules, the number of bonuses heard is the same as the number of tossups answered correctly not in overtime, i.e., P + TU minus the number of overtime tossups. Other rules may have regulation tossups that do not lead to bonuses, overtime tossups that do lead to bonuses, or no bonuses at all.
Many tournaments use PPB to compare teams who did not play the same opponents, because the quality of a team’s opponents cannot affect its points per bonus.
PPTUH, PP20TUH, PPnTUH: Points Per Tossup Heard, Points Per 20 Tossups Heard, or Points Per n Tossups Heard
For teams, PPTUH is the total number of points scored divided by the number of tossups heard. Versions with a number in the middle, like “PP20TUH,” are multiplied by that number; PP20TUH thus essentially represents the number of points a team scored in an average 20-tossup game.
For individual players, the calculation is the same except that only tossup points are considered (because only tossup points are credited to an individual player rather than to the team as a whole).
ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ seeds playoff brackets based on preliminary win-loss record, then team PPTUH in the preliminary rounds, and uses players’ PPTUH to give individual awards.
Since in ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ gameplay, bonuses are not played in overtime, teams that have played overtime may have their PPTUH slightly “deflated.” Rarely, some tournament directors correct for this by considering PPTUH in regulation only or by awarding teams their average PPB for overtime bonuses (when calculating PPTUH).
BB%: Bounceback Conversion Rate
Some tournaments (though not ones using official ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ rules) offer “bouncebacks,” the opportunity for the team who didn’t answer a tossup correctly to try to answer any bonus parts that the tossup-answering team fails to answer correctly. For such tournaments, the bounceback conversion rate is the number of bounceback points earned divided by the maximum number of bounceback points the team could possibly have earned (the latter of which is the same as the number of bonus points that the team’s opponents collectively missed).
Lightning/Worksheet Points, Lightning/Worksheet Points Per Game
Some tournaments (though not ones using official ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ rules) offer lightning rounds or worksheets as part of a game. For such tournaments, the Lightning- or Worksheet-Points column represents the total number of points a team earned through such means, and the Lightning Points Per Game or Worksheet Points Per Game column represents that number divided by the number of games the team played.
P%: Power Percentage
The proportion of correct tossup answers that a team or player answered early enough to earn power points. This is calculated as P / (P + TU).
This statistic is used to break ties in PPTUH when ranking individual players.
Celerity (only used in Buzzword)
The fraction of the question that had not been read at the time of a buzz (for which a correct answer was provided). 1.000 is an immediate buzz, .500 is an answer given halfway through the question in terms of time on the sound recording, and .000 is an answer given at the very end.

This document focuses on tournaments for teams. Tournaments for individuals may report results differently.