Partial Perfect-N Chart Generator
"Young and Pope" Pinewood Racing Charts

About the Charts

Partial Perfect-N (PPN) Charts are a concept expounded to me by Cory Young, under the name "Enhanced Lane Rotation." They are "final standing" charts, which span the most of the gaps in Perfect-N charts. They satisfy most of the Perfect-N criteria.

A PPN chart is one which satisfies these conditions:
   1. Each car races the same number of times in each lane (which implies that the number of races is a multiple of the number of cars)
2. Equality of opposition is optimized, i.e., no head-to-head matchup count exceeds another by more than 1.

There are no known PPN (or better) charts for the following cases: 5 lanes: 20 and 22 cars; 6 lanes: 16, 17, 29, 30, 32, 33, and 34 cars. (Many of these cases fall near Perfect-N charts ... which seems to be a complicating factor.) Lower quality charts, labeled "Miscellaneous", are produced for these options. Whether the chart is used for awarding trophies or screening for a more accurate finals, more accurate results will be accomplished by running byes in a PPN chart constructed for a larger number of cars.

Accuracy of the PPN charts ranks below Perfect-N, slightly better than Stearns, and above Double Elimination.

This page produces Perfect-N and Complimentary Perfect-N charts when the chart selection parameters allow. Otherwise, it generates Partial Perfect-N charts. The page title tells the type.

Need help on specifying chart parameters? Go Here!
For information on usage of the mechanized "Scorekeeper" chart option, see Scorekeeper Help.

If you get a browser error message, please see this!

If you get charts that don't seem to match your input specifications, please check here , generate the chart again and send the contents of the PPNGEN DIAGNOSTIC OUTPUTS page to Stan.

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If you are having trouble saving the page to your local disk or just want all of the pieces close at hand, here is a 45K zip file with versions current as of 4/12/2000.

Get old version.

Making a Chart

Chart Title
Enter the main title for the chart:
 
Chart Selection
Enter Number of Lanes (2 thru 6):
Enter Number of Cars (2 thru 60):
Enter Number of Rounds (1 thru 12):
(3-5 Lane charts mostly limited to 2 rounds;
6 Lanes mostly limited to 1 round.)
 
Output Selection
Select type of output:
 
Heat Ordering Options
Selecting "Medium" weight for each criterion produces excellent heat sequence. Chart generation times increase when ordering options are used.
Keep heat counts even? Weight:
Avoid cars in consecutive races? Weight:
Avoid cars in the same lanes in consecutive races? Weight:
 

Latest revisions:
9/11/99: Permit display of multiple simultaneous charts.
12/8/99: Correct Chart type for case 6 Lanes, 31 Cars.
12/28/99: Correct Chart type for case 5 Lanes, 9 Cars, 2 Rounds
2/16/2000: Add tab-delimited output.
4/8/2000: Improve "keep heat counts even" ordering algorithm and
improve descriptions in the input form.
4/15/2000: Reformat and retitle the page;
provide diagnostic output option;
put "separate scoresheet" on a separate page.

Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000 © by Stan Pope and All rights reserved. Permission is granted to store this file unchanged on your computer for "off-line" chart generation for your pack, district, or council races.
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