Some of my colleagues recently ran in the Melbourne Half Marathon. The good folks who administer the event are good enough to provide an excel spreadsheet listing the finishing times of each competitor with their registered age and gender. You might find it useful in the classroom. There are some interesting patterns in the data but not for the reason you might first think.
Melbourne Half Marathon
November 4th, 2009 Chris Lloyd Posted in Sport, Surveys and Sampling, Teaching 4 Comments »
Are we all log-normal deviates?
October 19th, 2009 Chris Lloyd Posted in Public Interest, Sport 5 Comments »
Some simple human characteristics are reasonably close to normal – like height or length of index finger. But more complex human abilities are strongly positively skew. Below is a cute little 90 second talk from Angela Duckworth, a well-known academic pyschologist at the University of Pennsylvania
Playing the big points
February 22nd, 2009 Chris Lloyd Posted in Fun Stuff, Public Interest, Research/Theory, Sport 1 Comment »
Do some tennis players play better on “big points”? Come to think of it, what are the big points and can this be measured? Recent work by Olivier Gossner, Brian Rogers and Julio Gonzalez-Diaz has established a very neat framework for answering both questions. Read the rest of this entry »
World Athletics Records
November 27th, 2008 John Maindonald Posted in Fun Stuff, Sport 2 Comments »
Data on world athletics records are interesting for what they reveal about the limits of human physiology as well as the history of professionalism and training methods in sport. The post below is joint with Chris Lloyd.
Gold! Gold! Gold!
August 21st, 2008 Chris Lloyd Posted in Graphics, Public Interest, Sport 6 Comments »
The Olympic medal count is briefly replacing the AFL ladder as the most talked about sports ranking. The latest count is HERE. The United States reckon they are winning because they have more medals. Which got me, and no doubt many others, thinking - to what extent do Olympic medals measure national sporting prowess? And who is the greatest Olympian?
Time Lane ranks highly
September 4th, 2007 Chris Lloyd Posted in Fun Stuff, Public Interest, Sport 11 Comments »
Tim Lane is considered by many to be an elite sports commentator. And he is not at all afraid of bringing some quantitative insights to his analysis of the great game of AFL. Indeed, some claim he is one of the inspiriation for Stan the Statistician. Back in July 2005, he took it upon himself to add some quantitative meat to the laments of Victorian fans that too many foreign clubs were finishing too high up the ladder. The rather remarkable article is HERE.
Australia’s best known statistic
August 20th, 2007 Chris Lloyd Posted in Fun Stuff, Sport 4 Comments »
Probably the best known sporting statistic in Australia is Don Bradman’s career test average – 99.94. Oh the pain of that final duck. Even a poor score would have put his average over 100. Is there some way that a creative statistician might argue that the average is somehow biased downwards and that the “real’ average is greater than 100?
It’s just not cricket #5
December 21st, 2006 Chris Lloyd Posted in Fun Stuff, Public Interest, Sport 3 Comments »
Maybe one-day cricket is not real cricket. Certainly it began as pure entertainment. There are several differences in the rules for the short form of the game. For instance, leg side bowling is not allowed, which doesn’t really bother me much though it does seem unnecessary. But I do have a major problem with a quite different one-day rule. And it is an ethical problem not a technical one.
It’s just not cricket #4
December 18th, 2006 Chris Lloyd Posted in Fun Stuff, Public Interest, Sport 7 Comments »
Warney is bowling around the wicket to a right hander. It is the one that keeps straight. It pitches one inch outside leg stump, hits the pad in front of leg stump, going on to hit off. Decision? Not out. If the batman was a left hander, the same ball has pitched outside off stump. Decision? Out. See the difference? I don’t!
It’s just not cricket #3
December 12th, 2006 Chris Lloyd Posted in Fun Stuff, Public Interest, Sport 4 Comments »
Well, I’m having fun. Here is the third issue I would like to highlight. (Don’t worry. I’ll get to lbw next). Darrell Hair. International incidents. The issue is ball tampering - and wondering why the rules currently allow it.