The Cosmic Distance Ladder applied to Cricket

[akshayxyz]

in before the fool with rpt replies to this ^

what you talking about kid.......... Ponting has RPT of 120+ in test matches played after "13:47 10th December 2011"... SRT has only another 18-19 or so to match his career RPT of 82 or so... but going by sum total of RPTs of Sehwag, SRT, Dravid, Laxman, Gambhir.. any score below 367 should be a cake walk for India's 4th innings target in this match.

[Jersey #10]

Whatchyu talking about... You forgot to add the WPT to find out the exact target for the 4th innings then you add the RPTs of all the batsmen and subtract it by the RPI2 to find the runs to be scored in the fourth innings. Then you do WPT for the OZ bowlers to find the exact amount of runs India can score. This way you don't even need to be physically on the field. the creater of RPT and other such inventions.

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[The Outsider]

Nirvanam, I'll reply to your posts over the weekend.

[Raghav_12]

Good time to go back to these old discussions. Would be much less depressing than seeing what Indian noobs are offering on this Australian tour.

[Kriterion]

this theory actually makes intuitive sense. If I'm taller than my father, who is taller than my grandfather, who is taller than his father...does it not make sense to say that I am taller than my great-grandfather?

[The Outsider]

First of all, I have reservations with people calling it a "theory". A theory in the scientific purview is something which has risen from a hypothesis which has been tested and verified in a certain domain. At best it's a hypothesis, at worst it's junk, and realistically it's a musing on a blog trying to draw parallels between two disparate things.

[Magneto]

this theory actually makes intuitive sense. If I'm taller than my father, who is taller than my grandfather, who is taller than his father...does it not make sense to say that I am taller than my great-grandfather?

Then the family will look like a bunch of Russian dolls eventually.

[Vijay.Sharma]

this theory actually makes intuitive sense. If I'm taller than my father, who is taller than my grandfather, who is taller than his father...does it not make sense to say that I am taller than my great-grandfather?

The only problem is that height has no dependence on things around it whereas the Average of a batsman is completely dependent upon whom you play against. Consider the following - If I average 50 in gully cricket and my father averaged 45 in Zonal cricket and my grand father averaged 43 in Ranji Trophy and my great grandpa averaged 40 in Test Cricket can I consider myself the best? Do you see that height of a human being and the average of a batsman are extremely different quantities to be applied with the logic that you have?

[The Outsider]

Outsider, I have a couple of technical questions here. I am asking this question out of ignorance and I don't know how this aspect is countered while calculating distances. So please do not insult me or make fun of my lack of basic understanding. This is just an honest, humble question to know better from someone who knows better. So here goes - a. Suppose we want to calculate the distance between the Earth and say a star called StarX. b. So when astronomy chaps publish the distance as say 2 light years does it mean they are considering the average distance between the Earth and StarX from all points of Earth's revolution around the sun? I know when the scale is light years it would hardly matter if the Earth is on this side of the sun in its orbit or that side. But theoretically the distance would be different right....maybe in the order of 0.000000001 light years or even lesser?

Yeah, but the error bars on the measurements are bigger than the error induced by the Earth's revolution around the Sun, so for all practical purposes it is safe to ignore that error term. If in the future we are able to get error bars on the distances of the order of light years to be around the distance of the Earth from the Sun, then we would have to start taking into account the discrepancy caused by the Earth's revolution. Not only in Physics, but in a lot of fields where data and results are published for a general audience the concept of errors is ignored because people won't have a good understanding of what it actually means, but whenever something half serious is being evaluated error bars are a crucial part of the measurement.

Next uninformed or dumb question is that a. we know that our solar system is constantly moving in space. By that I mean just like Earth revolves around the Sun, the Sun also revolves around the center of the Milky Way. b. Assuming StarX is also in the Milky Way then even it must be revolving around the center of the Milky Way. c. And it is very rare that two stars will have the same speed of revolution around the central black hole of the Milky Way d. So would this fact affect the calculation of distance? I am assuming it will. Therefore, when they publish the distance of a star from the Earth/Sun then we laymen must interpret it as the distance only at that given point in time and space, right?

Yeah, the published distances are where things stand as of now - or to be more pedantic when things were certain number of years in the past since the light from the stars we are measuring the distance to takes time to get to us as well. However, one can do estimates of where the star will be relative to us today. So, for example the distance to a star is calculated to be 40 light years from our observations. But, generally we have a good idea of our motion in the galaxy and also the star's motion depending on their locations in the Milky Way. From this we can extrapolate the distance to the star currently - of course, the star might have ceased to exist itself due to certain other mechanisms, but it's trajectory can be extrapolated pretty accurately. But, once again the distance a star would have moved relative to us in the few hundred years light from it got to us is small and is usually neglected for the purpose of publishing the distance.

[The Outsider]

In the spirit of debate would you be willing to have a conversation with me to test that theory? I will not talk about any of my analysis at all. Let us only examine your deductions and the logical process behind it - that's all. Of course keeping the insults and ad hominems away.

It isn't even a theory. A theory is something which has already been tested and verified under some observations. I won't even call it a hypothesis, but an interesting parallel I observed between two disparate fields.

I am not as learned as you are in some subjects but for the purpose of this particular item I don't think we need more than some little information on logical argumentation and the common fallacies that we make in our arguments.

Yeah, no deep understanding or Cosmology or how distances are measured in the field is needed to understand the idea beyond the fact that due to time and space constraints we cannot always measure all variables accurately, but from the overlap of objects we consider to have some intrinsic property we can come up with a good extrapolation.

Please do not put me down if you do ot want to involve yourself. You have the choice of rejecting my invitation in a decent manner. Treat me in the same way as you would want other human beings to treat you.

I really don't want to get into a "debate" as such. I've presented my general idea and it's up to others to take it or leave it. Sure, I'll try to defend and incorporate valid criticisms of it but there is too much going on in my life beyond ICF to be able to indulge in a time consuming debate. I might leave you hanging for a month or two before I am able to respond to your arguments.

[The Outsider]

According to this theory Jesse Owens would be as fast as Usain Bolt today? Can anyone explain?

I am not sure by what margin Owens dominated his peers compared to Bolt, but yeah Owens would definitely be much quicker if he ran with the aid of modern shoes, training, tracks, nutrition etc.

[The Outsider]

Interesting and I understand the logic but can't agree with it. A 5% change in batting conditions every decade' date=' may not sound much, but over 80 odd years amounts to a sport that has changed beyond all recognition.[/quote'] True, it adds up. But there are a couple of important arguments to consider: 1. We have seen examples of players spanning close to two decades who have adjusted and maintained their performance level despite all the changes around them. 2. More importantly, if there was indeed some drastic rule/conditions change which happened in cricket to which it was impossible for batsmen or bowlers to adapt we would see a discontinuity in the batting/bowling averages of the entire set at that point in time. There is only one such discontinuity which happened post WW-I when the way pitches were developed was completely changed and the batting averages shot up by around 30% where they stand now roughly. Without meaning to make this into a Tendulkar specific thread, but choosing him as an example for his longevity of 22 years and having played in the years of Imran and Richards, then his own, and then the years of the upcoming generation isn't it safe to say that he has been able to adapt his game to maintain the same degree of excellence right from helmets without grills to DRS?

[The Outsider]

What a bunch of BS in the OP :haha: This guy really knows how to stretch a topic until he goes insane. To my surprise, he acts like one of the "smart" people on the forum. This online wold never fails to amaze me.

Did you learn to add 2 and 2 yet?

[The Outsider]

Here is where my disagreement is with your basic premise - it's the outlier theory. As you know that an outlier is only relative to the set of data points that it is being compared with. As per the process of batting (this includes who bowls at you, the skill of bowlers, the skill of fielders who determine whether your shots go to the boundary or not, and all other such dependecies) in the 1930s Bradman was clearly an outlier. However, the process of batting has undergone an almost unrecognizable change if you compare it with today. So would it be right to compare the outputs (batsmen averages) of the process of batting today against that of the 1930s?

The premise of the argument is that Bradman or Hammond or Hutton or Sober would have been able to modify their game to adapt to the modern changes like they adapted their games to maintain their supremacy to changes which happened in cricket over a 20 year period their careers lasted for and like Gavaskar, Richards, Tendulkar, Lara were able to do in the 15-20 years their careers lasted for. I would be convinced that my argument is wrong if you can point to a single rule/conditions change in cricket since Bradman started his career, when great batsmen failed to adapt to the change and maintain their performance across the change over a decent sample. In fact, BossBhai had mentioned in an earlier discussion that mid 70s were when cricket became competitive, so I said fine let's look at the averages of some great/very good batsmen across 1975. Here is what I found:

So someone like Gavaskar should have seen a major dip in his average after the mid 70s. He averaged 49 till 1975 and 51 after that. Similar for Chappell(51 and 54), Llyod(40 and 50), Boycott(47 and 47), I Chappell(41 and 47), Viswanath(38 and 43). There was no major change in any batsman's average who played sufficient cricket either side of the mid 70s. If anything, the numbers show a modest increase for most.

http://www.indiancricketfans.com/showpost.php?p=1003629&postcount=371 Over here, I've just taken a sample of some top batsmen, but you can do a 5 year sampling of the batting average pre and post 1975 and it's unlikely you will find a drastic change. Why? If it's so tough for greats to adapt to changes the likes of Gavaskar and Chappell should have been averaging in the 20s post 1975. Gavaskar, probably in the teens since he did not face phhaasshht boilers in domestic cricket. Regarding the second part of the post, not sure what you are saying - that greats adapt to maintain performance? If yes, then that's my view as well.

[tothepoint]

I posted this on my blog, but since it's relevant to cricket am cross posting it here as well : http://www.indiancricketfans.com/Blog/outsider/2009/11/22/cosmic-distance-ladder-applied-cricket

This is a very well written post. Hats off to you sir for thinking so outside the box.

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[CSK Fan]

Deleting the last few posts and locking this thread as there was no discussion intended. Great OP though