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Average question

• bikinigirl24 313 Posts

  Wed, Feb 14 2018 3:25 PM

  I have reached the saturation point for a legend and now nearly every game my average goes down but my question about it is

   Today I played Erin hills finished up a nine hole front half seven under my average dropped .01

   And then  Pinehurst front nine played  even my average dropped.03  how come it dropped more just playing even then being seven under 

   

• alosso 21,087 Posts

  Mon, Feb 19 2018 8:18 AM

  After saturation, the calcs become non-linear. That is, the highest score in the pool is cut off and replaced by the current score. With this, the effect on the average can be stunning, especially at the beginning, when the highest scores from any botched round are available.

  Can't tell you more precisely - would need exact numbers of scores and averages, e.g. 27 instead of seven under...

• Robert1893 7,729 Posts

  Mon, Feb 19 2018 9:55 AM

  @alosso

  What the person is saying that she shot a 29 on Erin Hills and her average dropped by .01 but then shot a 35 on Pinehurst and the average dropped .03. 
  
  That makes no sense, even with non-linear nature of how averages drop after saturation. Because the 29 was shot first, it would have replaced a score (at least) as equally as high as the 35 replaced.
  
  Probably what happened is the average didn't change after the score of 31 on St. Andrews that was shot between those two scores. As I'm sure you know, at times, there can be a lag for the average to recalculate after a round has been played. 

• BPeterson8256 2,940 Posts

  Mon, Feb 19 2018 10:22 AM

  It's just math. When the base is 500 rounds, it is easy to see that much variation due to rounding up or down. They must have barely missed getting another .01 in one round, making the next round appear to jump more.

  Brett

• Robert1893 7,729 Posts

  Mon, Feb 19 2018 12:01 PM

  BPeterson8256:

  It's just math. When the base is 500 rounds, it is easy to see that much variation due to rounding up or down. They must have barely missed getting another .01 in one round, making the next round appear to jump more.

  
  
  I have difficulty seeing it as a rounding issue with those numbers (i.e. a 29 and 35 and the average being just over 66). 

• BPeterson8256 2,940 Posts

  Mon, Feb 19 2018 2:10 PM

  Robert1893:

  I have difficulty seeing it as a rounding issue with those numbers (i.e. a 29 and 35 and the average being just over 66). 

  Her scores that day were 32, then 35. 

• alosso 21,087 Posts

  Mon, Feb 19 2018 2:19 PM

  Any lower score before a higher score should yield a more important change here. Alas, we can't be sure because we don't see it first hand.

  Are the numbers given from third parties exactly coherent with the talk?

  Were these scores directly related to the average changes?

  Were the averages mangled by inconsistent readings?

  While I want to say that ev1 did his best, it's not a safe call, only assumptions.

• Robert1893 7,729 Posts

  Mon, Feb 19 2018 2:40 PM

  BPeterson8256:

  Her scores that day were 32, then 35. 

  It was actually 29, 31, 35. The CC tournament is the Erin Hills score she’s referring to.

  Regardless, with that high of an average, there would need to be virtually zero variance in her base scores for a 29 to only lower the average by .01 (and it would need to be an effect of rounding ). 

• Luckystar5 1,641 Posts

  Mon, Feb 19 2018 3:17 PM

  Sounds like the possibility of saturation hadn't been reached, until somewhere in between those scores? Maybe? 500 scoring games for saturation is tedious to keep track of.  Just guessing here. 

• K7JBQ 1,469 Posts

  Mon, Feb 19 2018 4:21 PM

  Average dropping is not an exact science, at least in my experience. With a saturated average of 61.9, sometimes my average drops with a round of 30, and sometimes it doesn't. But then, sometimes it still drops with a 31. Go figure, but in the long run, no big deal. As you all know, it's a long hard grind to 60.0; don't sweat the small stuff along the way.