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Besides being obsessed by the spins of the golf ball there are also other issues bothering my mind about golf like probabilities & statistics, tactics and so on. So I suggest a new forum Scientific Golf or Golf Scientifically for those who want to stretch their minds to understand the scientific aspects of golf. My first questions to this new forum are these:
If you accuracy with irons is "normally distributed", what is the optimal angle of attack to maximize the goodness of the hit (and minimize the risk of top/duff strokes)? Does it depend on the average deviation (of your hit (from the optimal)) ?
With a "normally distributed" accuracy I mean (for simplicity) that if you draw a plane for which the swing path is the normal (vector) and the deviation (in the x and y dimensions) of the center of clubhead from the optimal hit point along this plane is normally distributed then your accuracy (around the optimal hit point) is "normally distributed".
We can maybe ignore the horizontal dimension as irrelevant for the question even thou the mistakes along this dimension may cause terrible "socket" hits with the shaft or equally terrible hits with the tip of the clubhead. But lets us focus on the vertical dimension.
In the vertical dimension you have a certain window for a good hit: your hit is a "top" if the edge of the clubhead hits above the middle of the ball, your hit is a "side" if the clubhead hits the middle of the ball and your hit is "good" if the clubhead hits below the ball. But if you hit too low, you will "duff" and the result is as terrible as with a "top".
The probability that you hit a top/duff is quite low as you are on the low side of the normal distribution. But the cost of such a stroke is high and in a risk analysis you have to multiply the probability of an event with the cost of the event to see how risky it is.
This pair of questions may sound simple but I don't think it is so trivial. Are there any golfers deep in mathematics, risk analysis or other related sciences able to reply?
Yours,
Paraneva
PS. After looking around on other golf forums, I have to admit: I love GolfTuitionOnline!
If you accuracy with irons is "normally distributed", what is the optimal angle of attack to maximize the goodness of the hit (and minimize the risk of top/duff strokes)? Does it depend on the average deviation (of your hit (from the optimal)) ?
With a "normally distributed" accuracy I mean (for simplicity) that if you draw a plane for which the swing path is the normal (vector) and the deviation (in the x and y dimensions) of the center of clubhead from the optimal hit point along this plane is normally distributed then your accuracy (around the optimal hit point) is "normally distributed".
We can maybe ignore the horizontal dimension as irrelevant for the question even thou the mistakes along this dimension may cause terrible "socket" hits with the shaft or equally terrible hits with the tip of the clubhead. But lets us focus on the vertical dimension.
In the vertical dimension you have a certain window for a good hit: your hit is a "top" if the edge of the clubhead hits above the middle of the ball, your hit is a "side" if the clubhead hits the middle of the ball and your hit is "good" if the clubhead hits below the ball. But if you hit too low, you will "duff" and the result is as terrible as with a "top".
The probability that you hit a top/duff is quite low as you are on the low side of the normal distribution. But the cost of such a stroke is high and in a risk analysis you have to multiply the probability of an event with the cost of the event to see how risky it is.
This pair of questions may sound simple but I don't think it is so trivial. Are there any golfers deep in mathematics, risk analysis or other related sciences able to reply?
Yours,
Paraneva
PS. After looking around on other golf forums, I have to admit: I love GolfTuitionOnline!
Discussion for the sake of discussion....why not?
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