Well yes, Dennis. This basically documents that the number of votes cast tracks the 5:1 ratio of bearded-vs-beardless new introductions. I seem to have a hard time getting across that bearded irises receive a lot of attention from judges because there are a lot of bearded irises!
Evidence of bias would be if judges were growing and voting for many irises of a class not much grown by the general public, or growing and voting for very few of a widely grown type.
As was remarked earlier in this thread, if one desires to attract more attention to a class, complaining about judges is not effective; promoting wider interest in the class among growers and hybridizers is!
Tom
--- In i*@yahoogroups.com, Dennis Kramb <dkramb@...> wrote:
>
> Is the AIS biased in favor of the bearded irises? Let's take a sampling of
> votes cast by its judges for Awards of Merit in 2010.
>
> 5,169 votes cast for TB.
> 1,256 votes cast for SDB
> 172 votes cast SPEC-X (29 for bearded + 143 for beardless).
> 135 votes cast for SPEC (18 for bearded + 117 for beardless).
> 231 votes cast for Louisianas.
> 62 votes cast for Californicae.
> 176 votes cast for Spuria.
>
> Tallying all the bearded votes vs all beardless...
> 8,361 votes cast for bearded (including those votes in SPEC and SPEC-X
> category).
> 1,333 votes cast for beardless.
>
>
> Want to compare Honorable Mentions?
> 11,742 votes cast for bearded.
> 2,243 votes cast for beardless.
>
>
> Is this evidence of bias? Draw your own conclusions from the data.
>
>
> But let me ask you this... if AIS can't do a better job to promote growing
> different kinds of irises to its own judges.... then what hope does AIS have
> to achieve this mission with the public at large? There's a white elephant
> in the room. ;-)
>
>
> Dennis in Cincinnati
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Tom Waters <irises@...> wrote:
>
> > It's not at all obvious to me that the AIS or its membership are "biased"
> > in favor of the bearded irises. This has been tossed out as though it were a
> > simple fact, when actually I think it is very much a matter of subjective
> > perspective.
> >
>
