I am wondering the fairest way to work out the 'best value for money' car. I am testing cars with strict guidelines which keeps it fair. What would be the best way to calculate the result? Say I've tested 50 cars, my idea was to assign the cars points. 1-50 (1 for the cheapest car). Then assign 1-50 points per track (1 for the fastest car). Then the car with the lowest score after all tracks and cost are taken into account is the winner. I have 5 tracks I've tested on and realised that this probably wouldn't be a fair way to compare the cars as the value would only carry the weight of 1 circuit.
I could always multiply the cost score by 5 to give a range of 5-250 points but can anybody more mathematically gifted than myself come up with a better way to score the cars. Please assume my total of 50 cars just for ease of maths.
Now, for a Mathematician's answer:
You are attempting to determine 'value for money' for your 50 cars. Therefore in order to do this you must first determine what you mean by 'Value' and 'for Money'.
Clearly the 'for Money' would relate to how much the car costs. For simplicity it is probably best to use the 'new' value for each car as stock. This ensures you are comparing like-for-like. The advent of the OCD with 0 miles cars also means that this is a realistic measure to use. To make the test more equal, it might be sensible to purchase RS tyres for all cars (I don't believe any come with this tyre as stock, so this would cost the same for all cars) - the value of this purchase you may wish to not take into account as it presents a greater % of a cars value for each car.
The difficulty arises when you try to determine 'Value', as this is a subjective measure. Suggestions have included PP, lap-times and the ability to earn credits. As this is subjective, the characteristics should be determined by the OP (acjy1985). The OP should also determine what weighting should be applied to each characteristic. To ensure fairness, ideally this should all be determined from a more abstract position, and should ideally not play to any particular pre-conceptions.
Once all the characteristics and weightings to be taken into account are decided, a mathematical formula can be determined to calculate the 'value for money' which the OP has requested, based on the OP's assessment of value.
As a note, all cars should start equal, in that they all have the same driver, weather, upgrades, etc...
Finally, on the choice of track times, this is one way of determining value, but could be miss-leading. Imagine you picked Le Mans, Route X, SSR7, Indianapolis & Daytona for the comparison. This would clearly favour speed over cornering and a Veyron would probably come out better than the ZZII. However is you were to choose Eiger Short, Tsukuba, Kart Space & Monaco instead, the result would most likely be completely reversed in favour of cornering over speed. Also, lap-times can be taken into account, however if finishing position can also be taken into account instead without detracting from the timing gaps with the right equation and tests.
