Tiebelle

"Thirty beats twenty-eight! We win! Our rule is better!"

The teal team's faces fell. Some of them started to argue back. Voices got louder. A young raccoon stamped her foot.

Tiebelle stepped into the middle of the room, and without a word, she held up her two ribbons.

Everyone slowly went quiet.

"Your numbers aren't the whole story," she said softly. "Each rule has a range. Remember Hedgeworth? The truth for each rule is somewhere between an at-least and an at-most, because some deals are still not sure yet, and because fifty deals is not so many. Let me show you."

She held up the teal ribbon. "This is the teal rule's honest range. The truth is somewhere along here." Then she held up the gold ribbon beside it. "And this is the gold rule's range."

She moved them closer, closer, until they overlapped, a wide stretch of teal laid over a wide stretch of gold.

"See where they cross? Along this whole part, either rule could be the better one. The gold team's number is a little higher, yes. But the teal rule's truth might be up here, and the gold rule's truth might be down here." She slid her hooves along the overlap. "With these ranges, we just can't tell."

A gold-team rabbit frowned. "So... we didn't win?"

"Nobody won," said Tiebelle gently. "And nobody lost. It's a tie. Not because the rules are the same. They might be different. But the data isn't strong enough to say which way yet. Crowning a winner now would be saying more than we know."

"Then how do we find out?" asked the young raccoon, no longer stamping.

Tiebelle smiled, and her white spots seemed to brighten. "Make the ribbons shorter. Test more deals, like Bigsby says, and let the solver search longer, so fewer are not sure yet. Each range will shrink. If the ribbons pull apart until they don't overlap at all, then you'll have a real winner, and you'll have earned it."