Let us be free; let us sing songs of love.
talk_back was having trouble understanding gymnastics' Code of Points, and apparently so is everyone else. I don't grok it the way I do skating's CoP, mostly because I quit gymnastics classes at age six so I could start ice skating. But I left an explanation in talk_back's comments and thought it might help others.
Each routine/element/thingy has an inherent level of difficulty that is calculated ahead of time. I am not sure how this is calculated, as I do not understand gymnastics nearly as well as skating, but the level of difficulty is rated on a scale of 1-7. If you're doing the balance beam equivalent of a quad toe-triple toe, your routine has a difficulty level near the maximum, or you can be more Jeff Buttle about it, etc. So you're going in with a base difficulty level, same as skating.
After you do your routine/vault/whatever, the judges then confer to decide how awesome your routine/vault/whatever was. There are some mandatory deductions: taking a step after a dismount, stepping out of bounds on floor exercises, falling on butt, etc. This degree of awesomeness is rated on a scale of 1-10.
They add your difficulty level to how well you executed whatever you were doing, and that's your score. Does that make sense?
If you know the specifics of the sport better than I do, please do comment and clarify. Or bitch about how the loss of the 10.0 system is killing the sport OMG, although if you do that Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir might skate over your hand. Just to warn you.
Each routine/element/thingy has an inherent level of difficulty that is calculated ahead of time. I am not sure how this is calculated, as I do not understand gymnastics nearly as well as skating, but the level of difficulty is rated on a scale of 1-7. If you're doing the balance beam equivalent of a quad toe-triple toe, your routine has a difficulty level near the maximum, or you can be more Jeff Buttle about it, etc. So you're going in with a base difficulty level, same as skating.
After you do your routine/vault/whatever, the judges then confer to decide how awesome your routine/vault/whatever was. There are some mandatory deductions: taking a step after a dismount, stepping out of bounds on floor exercises, falling on butt, etc. This degree of awesomeness is rated on a scale of 1-10.
They add your difficulty level to how well you executed whatever you were doing, and that's your score. Does that make sense?
If you know the specifics of the sport better than I do, please do comment and clarify. Or bitch about how the loss of the 10.0 system is killing the sport OMG, although if you do that Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir might skate over your hand. Just to warn you.