Scouting:

Accuracy of Scouts:
 

My accuracies are all tracked as percentages, and the "average" (i.e., typical) EXCELLENT scout is off by 16% - 16% of 50 is 8, which means the typical Excellent scout would rate your 50 guy in the range of 42-58.

The typical TERRIFIC scout would be off by 18%, a VERY GOOD scout would be off by 20%, etc., on down to the TERRIBLE scout, who will typically be 34% from the true value - 34% of 50 is 17, making the TERRIBLE range 33-67.  With the standard deviation (and the assumption of a normal distribution), we can also estimate *how many* Excellent scouts will be within a certain range of accuracy.  With an average and standard deviation of 16%, we can conclude that about 2/3 of the Excellent scouts will offer reports that range from 0% accurate (i.e., they got it right) to about +/- 32%.

I'll skip the details for now (and maybe forever), and there's plenty more data to analyze, but here's what I feel reasonably comfortable in concluding so far:

In TCY, the *average* EXCELLENT scout is off in his evaluation of a player's overall "current" rating by about 16%, and each step down the scout ladder adds another 2% uncertainty (so, the average TERRIBLE scout is off by 34%).  I suspect the distribution of evaluations by each "range" of scout is essentially normal, with a relatively high standard deviation (in the range of 16%-20%).  That is, a frequency vs. accuracy plot of all the "current evaluation" reports from EXCELLENT scouts is a bell-shaped curve, with its peak at 16%, and a standard deviation of about 16% (the curve is truncated on the left/low side).   In a sample population of 142 Excellent scouting reports, 32 of the reports were off by more than 20%, while 26 were within 5% of the presumed true value.  In 130 reports from TERRIBLE scouts, 95 of them were off by more than 20%, and none were within 5%.  I haven't looked at the "future" reports yet, but the standard deviation looks to be about twice that of the "current" assessments.