0.888 apart: what actually separated Santa Clara Vanguard and Blue Stars
Santa Clara Vanguard held off Blue Stars by 0.888 at Finals, and most of that margin (0.5 weighted, 56% of it) came out of one caption: Percussion. The piece argues that the difference between 5th and 6th was a verdict in Percussion, not a verdict on the whole sheet.
Every number below comes out of this site's own score archive. Nothing here is sourced to an announcement, and nothing here was reported by anybody else first.
The evidence
DCI World Championship Finals, August 8: Santa Clara Vanguard 95.025 (5th), Blue Stars 94.137 (6th). Margin 0.888. (the DCI Forge score archive)
Percussion is the largest single contributor to the margin: 0.5 of the 0.888, weighted (x0.5 against the total). (the DCI Forge score archive)
Blue Stars took Brass back the other way, worth 0.05 weighted. The margin survived it. (the DCI Forge score archive)
How the numbers are weighted
General Effect counts twice. The two effect captions carry 40 of the 100 points and the six performance captions carry 60, so a tenth moved in effect is worth two tenths moved in percussion. Every weighted figure in this piece is scaled that way; the unweighted caption marks are printed as the recap prints them.