Talk:2017/2018 Ronnie O'Sullivan snooker season

Prize money

There seems to be some confusion over the prize money. These are the figures I can come up with according to this article:

According to this article O'Sullivan had earned £9.2 million prior to the 2017 UK Championship. He had earned £353,500 prior to the UK in 2017/2018 season, and ultimately earned £868,000 throughout the whole of the season: 9,200,000 - 353,500 + 868,000 = £9,714,500 (+/- 50,000). That would give a figure of £9.7 or £9.8 million.

O'Sullivan has earned £202,500 in the 2018/19 season, which would give a career total of £9,917,000 (+/- 50,000).

That puts the true figure for his earnings anywhere between £9,867,000 and £9,967,000. This figure seems to be consistent with the Cuetracker sum of £9,965,634 (see https://cuetracker.net/statistics/prize-money/won/all-time)

Yet this BBC article states he has cracked £10 million. It looks to me the BBC is wrong, or have simply rounded up the total to the nearest £100,000. It seems strange for World Snooker itself to not report such an important milestone. Betty Logan (talk) 22:43, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Betty with all due respect I think you are wrong. Dave Hendon reported this in Commentary on Eurosport that if Ronnie won the tournament he would pass £10 million. Respected Snooker journalist Hector Nunns has written an article about it in the mirror. They all cannot be wrong. BBC is a respected source and just because you think they have rounded figures up does not make you right. As for World Snooker reporting on things like this they are useless in fairness. They report on as little as possible everyone knows they are terrible.178.167.130.40 (talk) 00:15, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

By the way Betty Cuetracker does not count Team Events so money is missing from Ronnie's career total on that site regarding Nations Cup, CVB Snooker Challenge etc. You yourself said not to reference cuetracker.net. you can't have it both ways. 178.167.130.40 (talk) 00:19, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

The issue here is not Cuetracker, but rather that there is a discrepancy in the BBC figures. If O'Sullivan has indeed passed £10 million then that means the prize money in this article is incorrect as demonstrated by my sums above. Either way, either this article or the main one has the wrong figures depending on which position you take on this. Betty Logan (talk) 00:38, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

No it doesn't Betty it's very simple to work out your are just relating to this figure 9.2 million it does not mean it is exactly 9,200,000 even at the time of writing. It could well have been 9.283,000 which along with your counting of say 9,917,000 would now make up the £10m. Who said your figures are correct. It has been reported by the BBC and Eurosport and respected Snooker journalists that he has passed £10 so I don't see why this bothers you so much. As a matter of fact Eurosport put a caption of his career earnings up after the UK last season as 9,558,665 I remember it was up on the info page who removed it ?178.167.130.40 (talk) 00:47, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

If the exact figure was indeed £9,283,000 then the article would have stated £9.3 million, not £9.2 million. That is basic rounding. But even if that is the case, that still means the figures are wrong in this article, because all the figures are worked out from the £9.2 million. If the rounded figure is out by £0.1 million then that means all the figures are out by £0.1 million. Betty Logan (talk) 01:17, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

The reality is that all these numbers are just pulled out of the air. Who knows what's included or not. To say that some number is "exact" is quite meaningless. My own view is that we ought to remove the prize money parameter from the infobox until there is a reliable official list somewhere which we can use. We ought to trim down prize money stuff in the articles too. Statements like "it was reported that Ronnie O'Sullivan had passed £10 million in career earnings" are ok. Nigej (talk) 05:10, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Who said it would say £9.3 Betty that is pure speculation?. You are just voicing your own opinion again with no way to clarify these comments not having viewed the figures available to the BBC or others. Nigej in fairness I don't think these numbers are pulled out of the air. If the BBC Eurosport and others are reporting a player has passed £10 million in don't think they are making it up. They obviously have information fromantic somewhere. I think career money should stay it gives us an indication what a player has won. Do you really have to get it to the exact pound and pence that would be impossible. 178.167.130.40 (talk) 07:34, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

The laws of mathematics say that £9,283,000 rounds to £9.3 million, but that is besides the point. All the figures in this article are calculated from the rounded figure of £9.2 million, not the rounded figures of £9.3 million, so that means all the calculations are now out by £0.1 million due to your changes. As such the claim that "O'Sullivan began the 2017/2018 season with £9.0 million (to the nearest £100,000) in career total prize money" now directly contradicts note 5 in the article which states "O'Sullivan thus had made an estimated £8.9 million (to the nearest £100,000) in career prize money at the beginning of the season." Betty Logan (talk) 12:04, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

I would like to wrap up the mathematics for those of science background, also what is accepted as source for those of arts background, so no matter how you look at it BBC is not a good source(unless they provide the detailed list). Betty, there's no such thing as laws of mathematics in rounding, I don't think you are a science major when you said that, 5 and above rounds up and otherwise round down is just the most common rounding method and not the only method. You can indeed round £9,299,999 as £9,200,000 to the nearest lower £100,000, this method of rounding down can be used, many programming languages can do this. Reversely, £9,200,001 can be rounded up as £9,300,000 which is rounding to the next closest £100,000 method. So, over £9.2 million could mean £9,299,999 or £9,200,001 which is a variance of £100,000. When we cite a reliable source the variance should NEVER be this great. You even said yourself that BBC used basic rounding, academically a reliable source does not use rounding. Therefore, BBC is indeed a worse source because its figures are 1: less reliable(because it has no reference to what list it is using) and 2: it has too much variance, Cuetracker has less variance than your BBC numbers because each tournament is verifiable and duly on record and thus more reliable at the same time. Also Betty, you cannot say that BBC is a better source, yet at the same time BBC's own figure of £9.2 million contradicted with itself, by that I mean when you computed using their figure of £9,200,000, Ronnie's current earning would STILL be below £10 million yet BBC already openly said it is above £10 million, BBC's actual figure needed to be between £9,299,000 and £9,299,999 before 2017 UK Championship in order for Ronnie's current winning to break £10 million when they said over £9.2 million (I just noticed that the BBC link "Ronnie O'Sullivan: 25 years at the top for a 'creative genius'". did not contain the word over), in which case they should've said close to £9.3 million instead of 9.2 million. As Ronnie's subsequent prize money winning since 2017 UK Championship and including 2017 UK Championship is £701,000, this is calculated by 2017 UK £170,000, 2017 Scottish Open £10,000, 2018 Masters £25,000, 2018 World Grand Prix £100,000, 2018 Welsh Open £10,000, 2018 Players Championship £125,000, 2018 China Open £5,000, 2018 WSC £27,500, 2018 Shanghai Masters £200,000, and High Break Prizes of 2018 Players Championship £5,000, 2018 China Open £21,000, 2018 Shanghai Masters £2,500. Cuetracker again wins here on consistency.

When you said "That puts the true figure for his earnings anywhere between £9,867,000 and £9,967,000. This figure seems to be consistent with the Cuetracker sum of £9,965,634", you did not examine carefully on Ronnie's Career Total statistics page on Cuetracker, the 2017-2018 earnings is wrong, it is listed at £826,000. Cuetracker made a mistake by not including the High Break Prize in 2018 China Open of £21,000 and 2019 Players Championship of £5,000(it showed a High Break total of £13,000 while it should've been £39,000), the CVB team event's £16,000 prize was also not included, the 1990-1991's £2,000 amateur earning was also not included, £2,500 from 2018 Shanghai Master's High Break Prize was also not included, Cuetracker will fix it later. Therefore Cuetracker's £9,965,634 is short by £46,500, when they fix it, the total should become £10,012,134, this number will be significantly different than your assumed BBC figure of £9,867,000 and £9,967,000 (a difference of between £45,000 - £145,000, almost a UK Championship's winner's share!), and this new number from Cuetracker is consistent with the general consensus that Ronnie's career total is now over £10 million. In fact, on Cuetracker, my careful calculation for Ronnie's Career Total Prize prior to 2017 UK championship was £9,311,134, yet this number is still missing his prize winning from team events. If each penny of this figure has a record on Cuetracker's database, you cannot say his winning is any less than this, unless there are repeated numbers in that data or errors on the website addition. Ronnie also started the 2017-2018 season with £8,941,634 with Cuetracker calculation, again consistent with both public consensus of rounded £8.9 million and consequently £10 million benchmark. BBC could've simply not checked an updated source and was being conservative when they announced Ronnie's £9.2 million figure, very possibly no math was even involved when they said it.

BBC needs to produce the list they used to be a reliable source (even if they did produce the list that shows exactly how Ronnie's current career winning is over £10 million, the £9.2 million claimed in the "BBC link". cannot be upheld, it is an either/or situation, because as I said earlier BBC already contradicted itself! So BBC MUST make corrections as well!), I know you can argue that BBC is the source, but academically speaking, this argument has no ground unless each source shows the audience what backs up their data. Therefore I still will say that BBC is not a better source by any means. Also, BBC and Eurosport had already said that their data/lists were "carried over" from an existing list without knowing their original reliability or authenticity. In other words, BBC and Eurosport don't even know if their own data is accurate! (You can try contact BBC and Eurosport to verify this)

I believe we should have a vote here, of which source to use for the prize money, if there's no other details available from BBC and Eurosport or other sources, Cuetracker will be the only and most reliable source.(If you need to verify with BBC etc., we should probably wait for this if it doesn't take too long) By the way Betty, how do you link to a note from the main article like you did with note 5? Do you need to know the code or is there a tool that does this? I don't know how to link to other notes. 207.164.0.10 (talk) 14:10, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

To link to the note I wrote [[2017/2018_Ronnie_O'Sullivan_snooker_season#cite_note-102|note 5 in the article]] (you can get the reference code from the URL by clicking on the note number). There is clearly a debate over which figure is correct, but there is no debate over which source to use. You can't overrule general WP:RS guidelines (which Cuetracker does not meet) even if it is accurate (it may well be in this case, but many inaccuracies have been discovered in many other cases). The BBC may be inconsistent or even wrong, but it is still a reliable source regardless because it has independent editorial oversight. But none of this addresses the current problem in this article, in that it contradicts itself: the totals are worked out using mathematical calculations using the £9.2 million figure, so if the figure is indeed closer to 9.3 then that results in all the numbers being 0.1 lower than what they should be. The upshot of that is that this article now directly contradicts itself by claiming O'Sullivan started the season with £9.0 million, but in the note that corroborates this figure the calculation comes out at £8.9 million (which incidentally was the figure you came up with). Now, £0.1 million doesn't make much difference in the grand scheme of things, but in this case it is the difference between cracking £10 million and not cracking it. If everyone agrees that O'Sullivan is now worth over £10 million in prize money then I suggest scrapping the note and just starting fresh with the £10 million figure. Betty Logan (talk) 15:18, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

I now completely understand your rationale between a bad source's good data(Cuetracker in this case) vs. a good source's bad data(which is BBC in this case), I don't think Cuetracker is a bad source per se, they are just a small staff trying to compile such a large database, if they had more staff, their data would be of considerable weight, maybe in the future Wikipedia will change Cuetracker's status to be a good source? Also Betty, please consider my carefully calculated figure, I've narrowed down BBC's calculation to within only £999 to MUST be between £9,299,000 and £9,299,999, please see above (if they are to be used as the source for their quote of £9.2 million), which is accurate within £0.001 million. Best way is still to ask BBC of the exact number they used when they published that news during 2017 UK Championship. 207.164.0.10 (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

I just went over the "BBC link". one more time and it only said "£9.2 million" and not the "over £9.2 million" as I originally understood. So now I have all the confidence to say that BBC really did contradict itself, such that if they used the exact number of £9,200,000, there's no way for their subsequent claim that Ronnie broke £10 million to be correct. It is in a situation of either/or and both cannot be correct and they must make correction on one of these. I have just debunked BBC's own reliability with its own numbers.

However I think we still need to come to consensus of which exact numbers to use, and if we can come to consensus that Ronnie started the 2017/2018 season with £8.9 million, without the consensus of the exact number, there will be an argument every time Ronnie breaks a milestone. Also because the other IP 178.167.130.40 kept changing it to £9.0 million, which I believe contradicts all sources and everybody here on Wiki. I ask the IP to not change it to £9.0 million if he cannot provide sources here. I also ask everybody to give in their opinion here. 207.164.0.10 (talk) 21:48, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

I think Nigej's comment has got lost in all the noise, but I agree with him. The earlier BBC figure and the latest figure cannot be reconciled because they contradict each other, but it's not necessary to so. We don't have to report how much he was on at the start of the season. As far as this article is concerned all we need to do is report his earnings for the season. As far as the main biography article goes all we have to do is report his current prize money total i.e. £10 million. None of the other figures are necessary. Betty Logan (talk) 14:27, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Either way Betty, since a lot of readers want the prize money in the beginning of 2017-2018 season to be shown, the figure 9.0 million is definitely not right and contradict ALL sources. But the IP 178.167.130.40 kept changing it to 9.0. 207.164.0.10 (talk) 22:54, 30 September 2018 (UTC)