A confidence per cell
Not per card, per cell. Sixteen clear holes and two doubtful ones on the same card are treated as sixteen clear holes and two doubtful ones, rather than as one uncertain card.
Photograph the card. Get the scores.
A photograph of a completed paper scorecard goes in. Player names, handicaps and every hole's gross score come out as data you can check, each value carrying its own confidence.
What comes off a card
Everything written on it, not just the numbers.
A scorecard is not a table of scores. It is a table of scores surrounded by names, handicaps, a competition, a date, a fourball number, printed par and stroke index rows, and two signatures. ScribbleScore reads all of it, because all of it matters when something does not add up.
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Saturday Medal18 holes · Stableford
PlayerAlex FourieHandicap14
Hole123456789
Par453443544
Score563654654
Card photographedHanded in at the desk, photographed as it is
Step through the four stages.
Before anything is read
The photograph is checked first
Reading a bad photograph confidently is the worst thing this software could do. So the image is assessed before the scores are, and concrete problems are named.
An illustration of a scorecard photographed under the window.
Retake this oneGlare across holes 10 to 14
The clubhouse window is behind you. Turn ninety degrees so the light falls across the card instead of bouncing off it.
Three photographs of the same card.
Why this matters more than it sounds.
The glare card is the dangerous one. A system that quietly reads through a specular highlight will produce a confident, wrong score on three holes, and nobody will find out until a prize is disputed. Naming the glare and asking for a retake costs fifteen seconds while the player is still at the desk.
How the reading works
Confidence, alternatives, and a second look
The useful question is not how often it is right. It is whether it knows when it might be wrong.
The alternatives it considered
Where a digit is ambiguous, the readings it could be are recorded with their own confidences. The classic scorecard confusions are called out by name: 3 against 5, 1 against 7, 4 against 9, 6 against 0, 2 against 7.
A second, targeted read
Cells the first pass was unsure about are read again on their own, looking at the strokes afresh and comparing them against the same writer's other digits, before anybody is asked about them.
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The course
It reads the par and stroke index off the card itself.
Most cards print par and stroke index along the top. ScribbleScore reads those rows too, which removes the most tedious setup job in competition scoring.
If you have not told it which course you are playing, it takes the layout from the card and gets on with it. If you have set a course up and the card disagrees, it shows you both and asks once for the whole competition, not once per card.
The card wins by default, because the card is the evidence and the grounding data is somebody's earlier typing.
Saturday Medal · 5 cards in2 of 5 settled
- Fourball 14 playersLocked
- Fourball 24 playersChecked
- Fourball 34 playersNeeds a person · 3
- Fourball 44 playersReading
- Fourball 53 playersReading
Cards are read on our side, so the desk keeps photographing while earlier ones are still being read.
Cards read while the desk keeps photographing.
Honest limits
What it will not do
Worth knowing before you decide.
It does not judge a signature
The photograph of the card, signatures included, is kept as part of the permanent record. Whether a card was properly signed and attested is a matter for the committee under the rules of golf, and the signed card is there for them to look at.
It will not guess through an unreadable cell
A score nobody can read becomes a must-fix exception, and the card cannot be marked as checked until a person settles it. There is no setting to make it fill in a blank.
Questions
About capture and accuracy
Does the photo have to be perfect?
No, but it has to be readable. A card photographed flat, in reasonable light, with all the holes in frame is what you are aiming for.
If the photo has a problem, ScribbleScore says which one: glare, blur, shadow, or an edge cut off. It tells you rather than quietly guessing through it, so you can retake that card while the person who handed it in is still standing there.
What do we actually have to do with the cards?
Photograph them. Collect the cards as you always have, then take a photo of each one in ScribbleScore on a phone or tablet. You can work through a stack one after another; each card joins a queue and is read while you carry on photographing the next.
There is nothing to type in, and nothing changes for the golfers on the course.
Can we scan cards instead of photographing them?
Yes. A scanned image works the same way as a photo, and scans are usually cleaner. Most clubs find a phone quicker, because the card is already in their hand at the desk.
How long does a card take?
About 45 seconds for a four-player card. Cards are read on our side rather than on your phone, so you can keep photographing while earlier ones are still being read.
Do we have to set up the course every time?
No, and often you do not have to set it up at all. ScribbleScore reads the printed par and stroke index rows off the card itself.
If you have not told it which course you are playing, it takes the layout from the card. If you have set a course up and the card disagrees with it, it shows you both and asks once which is right, rather than asking again on every card in the pile.
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