desj@brahms (David desJardins) (10/23/86)
In article <1715@emory.UUCP> riddle@emory.UUCP (Larry Riddle) writes: >[...] However, if one player has a small advantage over the other in >serving efficacy, then this advantage gets magnified when considering >the entire set. Which scoring system produces the least magnification? >Interestingly, the 9 point and the No-Ad systems are "best" in this >respect. This has nothing to do with mathematics, but isn't the system that produces the *greatest* magnification "best"? Presumably the objective is to determine the better player, so it seems desirable to have the most sensitive possible tool for doing that. As for the statistics, I hope that you took into account the length of the sets resulting from the various scoring systems. Otherwise, all you have discovered is that in longer sets the inferior player's chance of winning is reduced (hardly a revelation!). The question you probably want to ask is something like, "Given a certain average number of points to be played, which scoring system best uses those points to discriminate between the players?" Figuring out exactly what question to ask and how to answer it is actually a fairly interesting problem -- I'm not a statistician, so I'll leave it to them to discuss if they wish. -- David desJardins
osmigo1@ut-ngp.UUCP (Ron Morgan) (10/30/86)
In article <50@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> desj@brahms (David desJardins) writes: >In article <1715@emory.UUCP> riddle@emory.UUCP (Larry Riddle) writes: >>[...] However, if one player has a small advantage over the other in >>serving efficacy, then this advantage gets magnified when considering >>the entire set. Which scoring system produces the least magnification? >>Interestingly, the 9 point and the No-Ad systems are "best" in this I'm not sure I agree with this. As anybody who's played seriously (!) knows, there are a LOT of factors contributing to a victory than points. Tennis is probably the most psychological game in the world, for example. A championship- caliber player can be two sets behind and muster up the self-control and drive to pull up and ahead and go on to win (jeez, I wish I could do that). A lesser player tends to be psychologically cowed into concession. Uhoh.....I made a mistake here... actually, I'm disagreeing with the guy who suggested the system with the *greatest* magnification. At any rate two identical scoring situations can (among many, many, other things) have drastically different results in terms of how the game progresses, thus rendering statistical, pragmatic analyses somewhat inconclusive. Ron Morgan (whackTHUMPwhackTHUMPwhackTHUMP) -- osmigo1, UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas 78712 ARPA: osmigo1@ngp.UTEXAS.EDU UUCP: ihnp4!ut-ngp!osmigo1 allegra!ut-ngp!osmigo1 gatech!ut-ngp!osmigo1 seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!osmigo1 harvard!ut-sally!ut-ngp!osmigo1