Re: Crown Tourney

[kuijt@umiacs.UMD.EDU]

Ellwood and Leifr mention an "imbalance" in distribution
of crown tourney contestants (four from one southern Barony,
only three from north of Caer Mear).

Before anything further is said, I would like to point out
that this sort of statistic is interesting, but often not
meaningful.  Or, to bastardize Twain, you can find any meaning
you like in it.

The Knights of the Kingdom often discuss (in our TopSecret Meetings)
the percentage of Knights in Crown lists as some sort of barometer
of how well we (as an order) are doing in knighting up-and-coming
fighters, and other meanings are often ascribed to these statistics.
There have been one-knight Crowns before (the first one Barry won,
for example).  There have been seven-knight Crowns, also.  Crowns
that will lead to Winter reigns seem to be slightly lighter,
knight-wise, than those leading to summer reigns.  By and large,
however, these statistics are _meaningless_.  It is as useful to
ascribe such meaning as to tell no-shit stories (the other major
activity in TopSecret Chivalry Meetings).

Similarly, I think, for the statistics like four contestants from
one Barony.  The numbers are too small, and the deviation too large,
to ascribe any meaning there.

Only three fighters from north of Caer Mear _might_ have some
meaning, if we only knew what.  However, that meaning could be
random, or philosophical, or political, or just the fact that this
was a one-day event moderately far from the center of the North,
and so all the "I'll go if it's close" entrants stayed home.

Dafydd