It took a while to get this done but here are my final character rankings stats for the year:
Before DE1:
After DE11:
Spoiler for Character Ranking after DE11:
Akiyama Mio - 61.06
Nakano Azusa - 58.8
Misaka Mikoto - 58.77
Shana - 58.47
Katsura Hinagiku - 58.4
Aisaka Taiga - 57.79
Nagato Yuki - 54.77
Suzumiya Haruhi - 52.74
Sanzen'in Nagi - 51.07
Sakagami Tomoyo - 50.96
Hirasawa Yui - 50.86
Fujibayashi Kyō - 48.75
Saber - 48.43
Senjōgahara Hitagi - 47.7
Hiiragi Kagami - 45.56
Sengoku Nadeko - 44.69
Who went up the most in strength in Double Elimination. Was it Mio or Misaka? Actually based on my stats, it looks like it was Hitagi. After looking so bad near the end of the regular season, she finally got her act together and actually went back to looking like a Top 16 competitor. Only just barely, though. Next biggest improvement in Double Elimination was Akiyama Mio. After a few bad matches near the end of the Round Robin phase, Mio wasn't looking to great. A month later, she wins the Tiara and made it look easy. In third and a still a fair bit ahead of everyone else in terms of improvement is Misaka Mikoto. How many times was her name even mentioned as a serious champion candidate in the Round Robin phase? I certainly didn't think she had a chance. Misaka goes on to take out Shana twice and make the finals.
On the other end of the scale are the characters that seemed to have dropped quite a bit in strength. The big two are Nadeko and Nagi. For whatever reason, despite Hitagi going up considerably in strength, Nadeko decided to take a dive. For Nagi, perhaps the initially expectations were just too high to begin with. The third biggest drop goes to Shana. She look great the whole year but when push came to shove, she just fell apart.
As a note, the character rankings are based off their overall Double Elimination performances. Although Shana beat Azusa, Azusa looked better is the other matches so Azusa ranks above Shana. Same thing with Nagi over Yui.