Example of non code dependent compact way of presenting the math, so that we have all interpretable parameters in the face.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system#Step_2:_Determine_new_ratingThat is for Glicko 1. But, to really understand the logic, as users of such tools, it might not be enough, but necessary.
And if you read the talk of the page, one will notice that those trying to implement might need other type of details.
yet, that there is the more communicable across specialities I think. At least that is a compact thing that could be discussed if we could easily show it here.. and dissect as equals, not having to analyse code by code fluent experts and relying on their expert vetting.. Math. exist for a reason. It is to cross that qualia divide that expertise relying is preventing critical thinking from a larger pool of audience.. and chess users are likely to be well equipped with own logic..... why not respect that or tap on that?
It is likely possible it is only my limitations in visualising sequential procedural math. which has been minimized in this Wikipedia page. I think that there we have all the interpretable quantities in symbolic form, with minimal magic numbers to track procedurally from when they were introduced.. That at least readable equations there all near each other, can let us discuss which notion increases or decreases the rating. They may be hard to read at glance, but they are there to consult not spread over many lines and pages.. requiring a code reading expert, who can keep an equivalent model in memory in spite of having lost visual sight of the information.. My memory needs that unloaded stuff to be visible so the hard thinking can be on emerging interpretation questions, not running after the meaning of each new procedure lines... seeing the whole. and using brain for what it might mean to my world...
Only missing thing might be the initialization assumptions.. Is there something equivalent to this page for Bayes-ELO, and would it also apply to ORDO.
Sorry to be such a odd thing in the soup... I might be looking for something impossible.. too much work for me to figure out, and too much work for the constructors of these things.. We are all volunteers.. I volunteer my thinking, and ideas of what might help other too.. Like perhaps that poster who mentioned being of mathematical physics training, feeling something missing in the presentation. I have tried in the past to spend lots of time hunting for such code independent understanding out of github and other docs, and really, open source code has its own flaws with respect to communicating to user base and allowing critical thinking outside its common training as coder or developpers. I might have given up too soon also.
I could dwell and spend energy on the last figure of the blog, for example. I tried.. left a link to lichess own population distribution. maybe future work by blogger will address the question of population distribution.. Showing them should come with the assumptions behind.