[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: hintzman@oregon.uoregon.edu: More on basketball (fwd)



Interesting statistical comment. Obviously with independent and large
samples assumed to come from the same distribution, the mean heights would
be the same in Chicago and New York.  But that begs the question.  Why
would their mean heights be exactly 5'10"? ie, sure, the crowds in
various places converge on the same pitch...but why on such specific pitches?
Presumably, a social phenom, in which some subset of folks in the crowd
concentrate their energies on the "traditional" chant pitches, and the
rest of the pitch-unsure-to-pitch-deaf simply go along with them?

Chuck Watson


On Fri, 4 Aug 1995, Dan Ellis wrote:

> Dear LIST -
>
> I received this contribution to the debate of the moment from
> Doug Hintzman at U. Oregon.
>
>   DAn.
>
>  - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> I don't think anyone should be impressed by the ability of basketball crowds
> to always sing "air ball" in the same key.   If you asked the entire
> population of basketball fans, individually, to sing "air ball", their
> responses would describe some distribution along the pitch dimension.  The
> distribution would have a characteristic mean and standard deviation (SD).
> If you repeatedly take very large representative samples from that
> population, the mean pitch for each sample will be very close to the
> population mean. The standard error (SD of the distribution of sample
> means) should be SE = (population SD)/sqrt(crowd size).
>
> Undoubtedly, the mean heights for basketball crowds nationwide are very
> close to the same value.  That does not imply that everyone is of of the
> same height.  Likewise, the abilities of crowds to sing in the same key
> does not imply that the members of those crowds have absolute pitch memory.
>  Crowd data cannot answer that question.
>

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -