Friday, March 23, 2012

Four-point-four sigmas to the right

Here's something I've learned today from an Indian coworker of mine: in a comparison of the very best athletes from different sports, there is a clear all-time winner. It's an Australian cricketer Don Bradman (1908-2001). Below is a comparison of the top five greatest athletes of all time; the comparison metric is the number of standard deviations away from the mean of their respective disciplines.

  Athlete Sport Statistic Sigmas
1 Don Bradman Cricket Batting Average 4.4
2 Pele Soccer Goals Per Game 3.7
3 Ty Cobb Baseball Batting Average 3.6
4 Jack Nicklaus Golf Major Titles 3.5
5 Michael Jordan Basketball Points Per Game 3.4

Posted by at 3:24 PM
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2 comments:

  1. hmmMarch 23, 2012 at 7:24 PM

    I'd take some issue with this: some of these players have to play defense, and that defense isn't quantified on the scale.

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  2. przemekMarch 23, 2012 at 8:45 PM

    You're absolutely right; this does in fact completely exclude defenders or any athletes whose relative output is hard to quantify. So technically we cannot be sure Bradman was in fact the greatest athlete ever; someone else, whose output we haven't been able to capture, might have been even better. Still, that possibility seems highly unlikely.

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