Applying the Performance Method in your own organization is pretty straightforward. Its ideal use is for comparing performances when archers compete in more than one different archery round, scores for each round differ significantly, and it’s likely that different competitors will compete in the events. In the case of a traditional NFAA 5-spot or Vegas league, a simpler approach is probably better and easier to apply.
For each archer’s score, use the calculator to convert the score to performance points. Then you can simply add up the performance points to determine your winner. The calculator also includes a table of scores and performance points for quick reference and an Excel-ready formula you can copy and paste into a spreadsheet.
You can also download a sample Excel spreadsheet that demonstrates how to do the calculations. Using a spreadsheet, it’s possible to perform more complex calculations like automatically dropping each archer's worst performance.
The source code for the dashboard is available on GitHub.
All the data for the Performance Method calculations are from 2016–2018 national championship competitions with the exception of the USA Archery 25-Meter round which doesn’t have a national championship. Those data are from multiple years of 25-Meter competitions from the Minnesota Archers Alliance.
The NFAA Indoor and Vegas rounds count X’s in addition to the score and must be converted to their 360 and 330 equivalents to calculate performance points. There’s no way to do the math if the score and X-count aren’t combined.
This has the unfortunate effect of making a 300 50X and 298 52X score equivalent in terms of performance points even though they would not be equivalent for determining the order of finish in a competition. There’s no reason, of course, that an organization couldn’t calculate scores in the traditional way to determine final event rankings while also calculating performance points for the purpose of determining a “shooter of the year.”
Some organizations combine rounds in a single event and would like to calculate performance points for the overall result. A common example is a field archery event where the winner is determined by the total score from a field, hunter, and animal round. The recommended approach would be to calculate separate performance scores for each round and use the average of the three to count for the “Shooter of the Year” competition.
This approach ensures that each of the field rounds will be weighted equally and the final performance points for the event will be weighted equally with all the other events during the year.