[Proposal] Change to method attendance percentage is calculated

[MTurczyn64]

Work with me here: Given this Privates attendance record, Pvt Reas You can see that for the past 30/60/90 days he shows a 100% attendance. But, if you inspect the record closely you can see by the status for each entry this his attendance is actually abysmal. He has rarely attended a drill and he has been filing absences over and over again. Overall this does not paint a clear picture of his actual attendance and I would say that this individuals 30 day attendance is 0% and not much better for his 60 day. To help get a clearer picture of actual attendance I propose the following: For each attendance a value of 1 is assigned For each excused a value of 0 is assigned For each AWOL a value of -1 is assigned For drills that are non-mandatory any status is not counted nor is the date counted in the summation. Given Pvt Reas as the example there are a total of 10 events that he was required to attend between Feb 14 to March 14 as a 30 day period. There are 12 events during that period with 2 non-mandatory which equals 10 total events during that period to count. Of those 10 events he had 8 excused and 2 AWOL; 8 x 0 = 0 and 2 x -1 = -2 Summing these two together gives a value of -2. Then dividing this by the 10 total events leads to -0.2 or -20%. I don't recommend to work with negative percentages so in this case his attendance would be 0%. Which is true for this time frame regardless of excused absences. An important point to note is that this value of -2 is not forgotten in the 60 and 90 days calculations. Preceding on to his 60 day attendance there are a total of 25 days of attendance between Jan 18 to Mar 14, with 5 days of non-mandatory attendance which makes a total of 18 days of mandatory attendance; 23 - 5 = 18. Continuing with the process presented above he has 5 attendances, 11 excused, and 2 AWOL. Applying the factors for each: 5 x 1 = 5, 11 x 0 = 0, and 2 x -1 = -2; for a sum total of 3. Taking this a dividing by the total required mandatory attendance of 18 yields a value of 0.16 or 16%. In my opinion these are his actual attendances for 30 and 60 days, 0% and 16% respectively. Whereas we list them as 100% each. Now I completely understand that being excused from drill should not be a detriment to an attendance record, though in my perspective I am trying to see if an individual actually participates or not. Given this Privates attendance without inspection of the record, he is a glowing example of a 29th member, though given the calculation method I propose this guy should be kicked out of the 29th for lack of participation (which he will be in my eyes) or at least this provides a better indication to leadership that attendance/participation is slipping. Also you can see that AWOLs hurt the attendance rating which IMHO they should. Not until after 90 days would they be dropped from the calculation and they would not factor into the overall.

This gives a clear picture of actual attendance.

[Tuomainen]

Where do you see 100%, 2Lt @Turczyn29thID ?

I'm seeing this: 30 days: 0% - 60 days: 16% - 90 days: 16% - Total: 16%

With 7 months in and overall attendance 16%, isn't it quite clear picture that he's not active? And he could have been kicked out long time ago. Or am I not seeing what you are seeing? :D

EDIT: I'm confused now... http://forums.29th.org/discussion/2395/general-discharge-brad-r-reas

[MTurczyn64]

This is what I see:

Yes he was GD today. We knew he was an issue, long ago, though he started to play games with the absence postings and ELOAs and I have been tracking his attendance by hand, because as the image shows the attendance percentages were not adding up.

I tried refreshing my cache to no avail. Maybe the issue is that attendance is not being displayed correctly.

[swomma]

@Turczyn29thID attendance percentages are not show correctly (#338) . As for AWOLs counting in as a negative attendance there wouldnt be much problem with that - it is more policy issue rather then technical one. @wilson29thid @Wheatles29 ?

[MTurczyn64]

The thing that is unclear to me is how excused absences are handled in the attendance calculation. At least given from what I have encountered with Pvt Reas and others my assumption was that they were calculated as being present, i.e. a non-negative effect in the calculation. This may not to be the case and my assumption was wrong. Are they handled in a neutral fashion as I show in my calculation? i.e. neither a positive or negative.

[swomma]

It is pretty straightforward: percentage is counted from getting number of attended drills divided by number of drills, in the given time period, including only mandatory drills. It doesn't care if absence was excused or not. As for an example, in 30 day period if a member has 2 AWOLs, 2 excused absences and 3 attendances it makes 2x0 + 2x0 + 3x1 = 3 out 7 = 43%

[MTurczyn64]

Ok, thanks. The same as what I proposed. The issue I encountered above, which showed perfect attendance, lead me to believe that excused absences were a value of 1 and not 0. You have shown to me that this is not the case and you are already doing what I propose. I still propose to make AWOLs a negative 1.

[wilson29thid]

Hm, interesting suggestion, but I think if we were to alter the maths based on whether or not the person were excused, it would no longer be the person's "attendance percentage" and would be some sort of "attendance score." At the moment, attendance percentage and number of AWOLs are taken into consideration when determining performance, just as demerits are taken into consideration as well, but separately.

[MTurczyn64]

Attendance percentage or attendance rating, are actually the same thing in my view. Each is a ranking. Demerits stick around for 30 days. Exceeding 3 demerits in a 30 day period has consequences. What I am proposing in regards to AWOLs in comparison to demerits would have the same effect. Currently AWOLs act as an absence and in return effect the attendance percentage. I propose that AWOLs affect the attendance percentage much like demerits do. A person has an AWOL and because of this they get a demerit, i.e. a punishment. I would like to stretch this further and have this AWOL also hurt their attendance percentage by negating an equal amount of times being present for a drill. My desire is to drive the point home that going AWOL has a two fold effect, one with a demerit and the second on the attendance.