11/05/24
March 28, 2008
Numbers prove Nelson is still King of the Wild: Maybe this is the one way to figure out who is best no matter when they played.
I would suspect that the international fields today are much stronger and more competitive than back in the '40s and '50s.
posted by Landis at 01:21 PM on March 28, 2008
Whatever. Tiger Woods' video game kicks Byron Nelson's video game's ass. And Tiger's wife is hotter. I'm no better at commenting on golf than I am at futbol. So sorry.
posted by THX-1138 at 01:28 PM on March 28, 2008
I think a group of MIT statistical scholars just came up with a very complicated program on a very powerful computer that proves, once and for all, without any shadow of a doubt, that in certain statistical fields apples are superior to oranges.
posted by tahoemoj at 02:08 PM on March 28, 2008
Cigarette smoking has been proven to be the leading cause of statistics. But can sports be far behind?
posted by TheQatarian at 04:03 PM on March 28, 2008
Footballs, baseball, bats, pucks, basketballs, all have remained pretty much the same over many years. Golf equipment has not. Today's clubs and balls are much superior to what was used even 15 years ago. I don't feel any statistical machine can make any sort of accurate comparison from Nelson to Woods.
posted by BoKnows at 04:24 PM on March 28, 2008
What I take from all this is that Tiger's competition are not as close to his level as Nelson's (or Nicklaus') were to theirs. Earning points based on margin of victory is misleading at best. Tiger is very agressive to the end, while golfers in the not too distant past were know to become very conservative with a 8 shot lead with 5 holes to go. Bo, totally agree that the equipment of today makes it difficult to compare Nelson and Woods, however, each was playing against competition using the same type of equipment as they were. No statistical analysis is going to stop the debate...one of the great things about sports!
posted by dviking at 04:32 PM on March 28, 2008
Someday (but not today) someone is going to come up with one of these systems that actually does what they all set out to - definitively state who was best. Then we can all go home and stop talking about sport, and won't that be a relief? If I were designing a system, it would have to include a "how much flakey statistical debate did this player's abilities inspire?" factor. Tiger would score quite heavily on that.