cold_water
Registered
I regularly see the "how many dives have you done" and the "what's the deepest dive you've ever done?" threads with the usual answers that basically say "You can't judge someone's skill level only by how deep he went."
I was just wondering what people would suggest if they had to devise a good "algorithm" to objectively eyeball someone's skill level. I realize the best way to gauge someone's skill level is probably to have a chat face to face. Knowing this, sometimes it's difficult or impossible. If you're going on a trip and you're planning to dive there with someone you don't know, for example. I find it also difficult sometimes when you're not necessarily very experienced to gauge someone else's skill level. You just haven't seen it all and can't necessarily realize what kind of person you're dealing with. I learned this the hard way when I had to tow a freaking out insta-buddy up current in the St-Lawrence river for a half hour. At least, I got some good exercise out of it.
Anyway, in these cases, it would be nice to have an "algorithm" that you could plug numbers in and it would spit out some approximate measure of someone's skill level.
Some of the criteria some people naturally use and that would/might be good to take into account could include:
-How long since you started diving
-how long since your last dive
-total number of dives
-number of dives per year
-certification level
some that I was thinking could be taken into account could be
-(average?) depth of your 10% deepest dives
-...?
Then somehow magically assigning points, adding up and coming up with some form of objective assessment for what your skill level is. I'm not saying this could generate the absolute answer and that people would start saying "Ah ah! Your 5 points below me, I'm not going to dive with you for sure", but at least it could give some sort of impression of how skilled a diver is.
In any case, just fishing for ideas here. What do you all think?
I was just wondering what people would suggest if they had to devise a good "algorithm" to objectively eyeball someone's skill level. I realize the best way to gauge someone's skill level is probably to have a chat face to face. Knowing this, sometimes it's difficult or impossible. If you're going on a trip and you're planning to dive there with someone you don't know, for example. I find it also difficult sometimes when you're not necessarily very experienced to gauge someone else's skill level. You just haven't seen it all and can't necessarily realize what kind of person you're dealing with. I learned this the hard way when I had to tow a freaking out insta-buddy up current in the St-Lawrence river for a half hour. At least, I got some good exercise out of it.
Anyway, in these cases, it would be nice to have an "algorithm" that you could plug numbers in and it would spit out some approximate measure of someone's skill level.
Some of the criteria some people naturally use and that would/might be good to take into account could include:
-How long since you started diving
-how long since your last dive
-total number of dives
-number of dives per year
-certification level
some that I was thinking could be taken into account could be
-(average?) depth of your 10% deepest dives
-...?
Then somehow magically assigning points, adding up and coming up with some form of objective assessment for what your skill level is. I'm not saying this could generate the absolute answer and that people would start saying "Ah ah! Your 5 points below me, I'm not going to dive with you for sure", but at least it could give some sort of impression of how skilled a diver is.
In any case, just fishing for ideas here. What do you all think?