Cool graphic. Spot the outlier!

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Nicholas Gruen
Posted in Sport-general

Cricket Captains The diagram is here

21 Comments

  1. GrueBleen
    August 25, 2015

    Just goes to show what a stump, a golf ball, a nice bouncy wall and a lot of spare time can do for a bloke, yes ?

    Either that, or Bradman really was an alien freak. Though the graphic doesn't show many of Bradman's contemporaries, does it. Maybe bowlers have got a lot better than then.

  2. I am and will always be Not Trampis
    August 26, 2015

    I like the z Statistics on his batting. Another Bradman is due in about 10,000 years.

    Bradman didn't play against particularly strong sides when captain. the 'Invincibles' are a great example of that.

  3. Nicholas Gruen
    August 26, 2015

    Yes, but the difference between himself and everyone else is just amazing. Australia has a habit of producing people a bit like that.

    Walter Lindrum
    Heather Mackay

  4. John walker
    August 26, 2015

    There is an American baseballer that is also a simmilar outlier, cannot remember name.

  5. GrueBleen
    August 26, 2015

    Yes, I think you're right but it wasn't the one named after a disease, it was the other one, wasn't it ? The one named after a loyal Moabite ?

  6. GrueBleen
    August 26, 2015

    Well since you've included Heather Mackay/Blundell, you could almost have included Geoff Hunt if it hadn't been for Jahangir Khan.

    But what about Hubert Opperman ?

  7. I am and will always be Not Trampis
    August 26, 2015

    I could be wrong Nick but I do not think they show up in a Z Test like Bradman.

  8. Nicholas Gruen
    August 26, 2015

    He seemed pretty amazing.

  9. Nicholas Gruen
    August 26, 2015

    Heather Mackay - Women's squash champion for 16 years running? You can't do much more can you.

    (In some ways Rod Laver is also up there - in a more competitive sport - for having won the Grand Slam on the last occasion it was available to him as an amateur and the first occasion it was available to him as a professional. That's pretty extraordinary and unprecedented. But still not quite in Bradman's class I think.)

  10. John walker
    August 26, 2015

    It may be babe Ruth ? S J Gould wrote a essay about , who ever it was, and the statistical significance. But it's years since I read it.

  11. John walker
    August 27, 2015

    http://www.michaelshermer.com/1996/10/bicycles-baseball-bacteria-and-bach/

    Think the essay is in this collection.

  12. paul frijters
    August 27, 2015

    Aussie economists also often like to point to what an extraordinary outlier Bradman was. Eg. http://freakonomics.com/2008/08/21/usain-bolt-its-just-not-normal/#more-2986

    Bruce Chapman has a couple of papers on how many millions Bradman earned for cricket (eg https://ideas.repec.org/p/auu/dpaper/480.html). He stopped writing more papers on it when he ran out of methodological twists to make Bradman look even more impressive. Now, there's a fan :-)

  13. conrad
    August 27, 2015

    Yiannis Kouros is another. If only people cared about ultra-distance running. YK

  14. Patrick
    August 27, 2015

    4.4min kms for 100 miles... that's some serious running.

  15. Patrick
    August 27, 2015

    But it is such a minority sport, that I think the biggest variant, and a largely random one at that, is participation.

    After all, there is no money in it, so the Kenyans don't do it. I am not saying they would be better, of course it is a completely different sport to normal distance running, but they might be.

    This is also why Rhonda Rousey is not that special, whereas Mayweather or Tyson are :)

  16. GrueBleen
    August 27, 2015

    And Lew Hoad would certainly have been up there but for the back problem that basically ended his career (after he turned pro).

    Also, Herb Elliott ?

  17. Nicholas Gruen
    August 28, 2015

    Why Lew Hoad? He didn't even dominate the amateur game like Rod Laver did. And Herb Elliot? I don't know that much but there were plenty of other runners around then weren't there - John Landy, Roger Bannister? What did HE or LH do that matches Rod Laver's Grand Slam record at his height?

  18. GrueBleen
    August 28, 2015

    Ok, well here's an extract from the Wikipedia entry for Herb Elliott:
    _________________________________________
    Herbert James "Herb" Elliott AC MBE (born 25 February 1938) is an Australian former athlete, one of the world's greatest middle distance runners. In August 1958 he set the world record in the mile run, clocking 3:54.5, 2.7 seconds under the record held by Derek Ibbotson; later in the month he set the 1500 metres world record, running 3.36.0, 2.1 seconds under the record held by Stanislav Jungwirth. In the 1500 metres at the 1960 Rome Olympics, he won the gold medal and bettered his own world record with a time of 3:35.6.

    Few people have ever exercised such absolute authority in any branch of sport as Elliott did in middle distance running from 1957 to 1961. During that span he never lost a 1500 metres or 1-mile race.[2] During his career, he broke four minutes for the mile on 17 occasions.
    _________________________________________
    I don't remember landy or Bannister or indeed anyone having a record quite like that, so you ?

    As to Lew Hoad, well here's Wikipedia again:
    _________________________________
    For five straight years, beginning in 1952, he was ranked in the world top 10 for amateurs, reaching the World No. 1 spot in 1956.[1] Hoad was a member of the Australian team that between 1952 and 1956 won the Davis Cup four times. He turned professional in July 1957.

    Hoad won four majors as an amateur, and won the 1959 Tournament of Champions as a professional. Rod Laver, writing for the Herald-Sun newspaper in 2012, ranked Lew as the greatest player of the 'Past Champions' era of tennis. Laver described his strengths of "power, volleying and explosiveness" as justification of his accolade.[3] Serious back problems plagued Hoad throughout his career, particularly after he turned professional, and led to his effective retirement from tennis in 1967 although he made sporadic comebacks enticed by the advent of the open era in 1968.
    ___________________________________
    Like I said he "... would certainly have been up there but for the back problem that basically ended his career (after he turned pro)."

    Even with his back problem, he put up a very creditable performance against that other early pro great, Pancho Gonzales.

  19. Chris Lloyd
    August 28, 2015

    Pretty harsh putting Richie on the graphic. He was not a batsman! Bradman's bowling average was really...shit!

  20. Nicholas Gruen
    August 30, 2015

    I think he's in there as a captain.

  21. David Kitchen
    August 31, 2015

    Actually I see three outliers. Bradman stands out as others above have noted. I also see two smaller outliers who probably really don't wont the attention namely Richie Benoud and Ian Johnson. They are not as strong an outlier as Bradman, but unfortunately for them on the wrong side of the trend line!