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BGonline.org Forums
Median vs. Arithmetic Mean
Posted By: phil simborg In Response To: Median vs. Arithmetic Mean (Chuck Bower)
Date: Saturday, 9 August 2014, at 12:56 p.m.
Excellent points, Chuck. And the better the player, the less these difference become a factor. Player who average under 4 PR have fewer outliers and the ones they have are generally less severe. Players who average, say 6 or 7 PR have plenty of matches where they will play over 10 or 11 PR and even higher. And by the way, I would bet that 90 percent of players who say their PR is in the 5-9 PR range have sort of forgotten about those outliers and are really averaging 1.5 to 2 PR worse than they say they do.
If you look at the recent matches of Mochy and most of the other top players, you won't see them intentionally making very many large errors on the cube because of their skill difference over their opponent. Maybe they should play more that way, and maybe a few years ago that strategy was more prevalent, but it is pretty clear from the PR's and the lack of blunders that they are not doing that very much today.
However, again, 5-8 PR players are probably doing this a lot more...probably more than they should, and of course, if they are playing other higher PR players some times they are rewarded for it by getting a drop when there is no double, or getting a take when they are too good, and yes, this will help their ELO and hurt their PR.
I also agree that median is a better way to judge a player's true skills over the board than average, or compute the average after removing the 25 percent best and worst matches.
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