John,
Thanks for the very succinct article on the differences between largest and smallest groups in a string. Especially that the jacketed bullet BR folks have about the same ratio as we do. Hard to argue theory when the facts keep smacking you in the face!
Thanks again,
Ric
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Ric,
Glad you enjoyed it. We will see. I would like to think that facts would prevail over the fallacy of; "Joe does it and he wins lots of matches so it must work". But the reaction I often get tells me that I am being overly optimistic about facts overcoming beliefs.
I hope I am wrong.
John
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Sometimes, in the spring practicing for matches, I will shoot a series of 5-shot groups. What I should be looking for is making my largest group averages smaller, rather that looking at my smallest groups. Four shot matches are won on aggregates, not on one small group.
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John,
In defending the statistics, you may have overlooked something. There may be something to Boyer’s method for tuning.
The five, 5 shot strings show a ratio of 1.91. If you look at the chart diagonally, with equal shots with equal groups, you see the same 1.91 ratio throughout the chart. For three, 3 shot groups, the ratio is 1.91.
Results from the Super Shoot showed the winners with the expected ratio for the top shooters. The ones finishing farther down the standings showed ratios .300 plus, suggesting they may be out of tune.
I may look at this when trying a new component combination and maybe save time and money. It may also show a truly awful load by using the ratios.
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"Four shot matches are won on aggregates, not on one small group."
YEP!
The article found facts counter to what most shooters believe about groups. I wonder what the average, or non-average, shooter thinks about that finding. "I already knew that", "My groups are different" "My mentor told me the opposite so I don't believe it," " statistics were involved and statistics lie", "I am going to check out my own strings of groups or aggregates and see it they conform to the findings in the article," Or ?????.
Sure would be nice to know if it had any effect at all, especially constructive or non-constructive criticism.
John
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I plan to review my spreadsheets and crunch the numbers. Everything in your article, John, made perfect sense. I just gotta see for myself. As soon as I read it, I looked at the last six ten shot groups (same load,different days). The multiplier was substantially lower than predicted, but, that’s only one data point. There weren’t a lot of numbers in the chart either. While there’s little doubt in my mind that the theory is good, the ratios may be different. Very interesting. The idea that correlation establishes causality is seductive, but frequently (mostly?) wrong.
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"The five, 5 shot strings show a ratio of 1.91. If you look at the chart diagonally, with equal shots with equal groups, you see the same 1.91 ratio throughout the chart. For three, 3 shot groups, the ratio is 1.91."
Paul,
Interesting. I hadn't noticed that. Do you think it is more than just a quirk in how the numbers come out?
After reading your comment about the shooters who placed low having L/S ratios of over 3, I went back into the results for the IBS Nationals and checked he top five placers and the bottom five placers in several matches. In each match, the average L/S for the top five and the average for the bottom five were almost IDENTICAL and very near the expected 1.9.
However, the group aggregates in the bottom fives were nearly twice as large as the group aggregates of the top five shooters. Whether this was due to better tune, better equipment, better wind doping, or something else is unknown. This indicates that smaller groups, no matter the reason, do not result in lower L/S ratios -- at least for the groups in the IBS nationals. This is of course what the article found for widely different group sizes.
Average L/S ratios of several strings of groups over 3 are extremely rare and usually because of a disaster in one group in each string.
The only Super Shoot results I can find are only for aggregates. Can you send me a link to your source. Thanks.
John
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