I can actually tie the cricket thread directly to the teaching of
psychology.....
I have my Research Methods and Statistics students read a 2001 article
from the Sydney Morning Harold. It is by an Australian scientist, Charles
Davis, who used z scores to determine who was the best athlete (based on career
data). He constructed distributions for several sports. The measures he used
varied, of course, among the sports - points per game for basketball, batting
average for baseball, etc. Then, for each sport he determined who had the
highest z score. This allowed him to compare accomplishments between sports
and determine who was farthest from the average.
So, who had the highest z score? Cricket player Don Bradman, with a
score of 4.4.
For other sports, the best were:
Basketball - Michael Jordan - z score of 3.4.
Soccer - Pele - z score of 3.7
Tennis - Bjorn Borg - z score of 3.15.
Baseball - Ty Cobb - z score of 3.6
Golf - Jack Nicklaus - z score of 3.5. (NOTE - The author, in 2001,
did acknowledge that Tiger Woods may eclipse this, but the z scores are based
on entire careers).
American football - Steve Young and Joe Montana, both 3.1.
Robert Lennartz, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
Indiana University Southeast
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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