Page "Diving" Paragraph 19

There is a general misconception about scoring and judging.

In serious meets, the absolute score is somewhat meaningless.

It is the relative score, not the absolute score that wins meets.

Accordingly, good judging implies consistent scoring across the dives.

Specifically, if a judge consistently gives low scores for all divers, or consistently gives high scores for the same divers, the judging will yield fair relative results and will cause divers to place in the correct order.

However, absolute scores have significance to the individual divers.

Besides the obvious instances of setting records, absolute scores are also used for rankings and qualifications for higher level meets.