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Accuracy measurement

The game of snooker holds a quantum surprise
 
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This is an idea I have had for a long time. I would love to see the snooker media make it happen.

The idea is to measure exactly how accurate certain shots were played.

We would especially focus on the longpots. I would just like someone to do the math because I can't but would like to know.

A snooker table is twelve feet long, a snooker ball is 52.5 milimeters. A cuetip is 8 or nine millimeters wide.

Say Jimmy White brakes of and leaves a longpot for Stephen Hendry. Tricky to take on. There is no road back to safety so a shot to nothing is not on. However, a good kiss on another red would leave the black available. Then again, a miss would leave multiple reds and the black readily availible. What to do? Play safe like the oldfashioned style of play or go for it and secure the frame at one visit? Stephen Hendry was never one to ignore a challenge. In fact, taking this kind of risk is his hallmark and with it he changed the game forever, setting a new standard.

So lets say Jimmy got a pretty good break off shot, as is he normally does. The white is a five millimeters from the balk cushion. He gets applause. On red got out. Just hovering there some five cetimeters from the black cushion, twenty from the left black pocket. A thin cut.

One other red in the open, one by the cushion, safe.

A good break by any standerd.

Distance between red on and white: 11 feet and a half and a bit(I never could get the hang of feet versus centimeters).

I would guess that with the ball being 52,5 millimeters and it being located twenty centimeters from the pocket you would have about half a millimeter to hit to pot.

The direction of the cue 11 feet and half (and a bit)away would have to be precisely.... Well I don't know but it would have to be pretty precise.

All this would be tested in a laboratory situation with exact maesuring and just calculating from previously played shots in tournaments.

With my limited grasp of maths and physics I think that the outcome would dazzle anybody.

It would be proven that these players are accurate to within thousands upon thousands of millimeters.

So the idea is just to prove people can be that accurate, we see it on tv but now it is mathematically proven.

This astounding revelation would get us to think further about man's capabilities and about the direct impact of quantum physics in our daily lives, if you happen to play snooker daily.

And I haven't even mentioned the occasional supershot or astounding fluke.

This could also be done with other sports.

All sportsmen and women sometimes experience a certain high, that enables them rise rise above themselves. I say it enables them to rise above the normal everyday physics that govern our lives and they trangsress into the world of quantum physics, or at least a world of highly improbable accuracy.

Let's get the scientists to tell us about it. Or maybe a halfbaker can shed some light on this if he or she feels so inlclined.

zeno, Sep 18 2007

Accuracy vs. Precision http://honolulu.haw...Lab/L5/accprec.html
Please don't confuse the two! [csea, Sep 19 2007]

[link]






       "Well, if Typhoon Terence was aiming to graze that in off the left edge of the pocket, he was within 2 seconds of arc and 0.1m/s of the correct cueball velocity"
"True, Stan, true. But if he was aiming to scrape it by the right edge there, he was a good half a degree out. I guess we'll never know."
"I guess we won't, there, Doug, I guess we won't."
MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 18 2007
  

       Oh don't get me started on pool, just don't. My left eye will twitch and my wife will have to calm me down, again.
zeno, Sep 19 2007
  

       //a good half a degree out\\, how about a good half of a millionth degree?
zeno, Sep 19 2007
  

       [MB] states the problem with the system very well. To achieve EXACTLY what happened requires accuracy to within ±1/infinity. To achieve the desired result, less so, but what exactly was the desired result?
Texticle, Sep 19 2007
  

       You could create a state vector with all the possibilities of shots the player *may* have been attempting, and work the math on each one.
ed, Sep 19 2007
  

       What accuracy of cuemanship is required to nudge the white 273.156846541mm forward in the 36.1564165616° direction like I just did then? With accuracy like that, I could put White and Hendry to shame.
Texticle, Sep 19 2007
  

       <pedant> Please don't confuse accuracy with precision!
See [link]
  

       Also, //within thousands upon thousands of millimeters//
  

       "Thousands upon thousands of millimeters" (probably) means kilometers (depends on the meaning of the imprecise term "upon".)
  

       sp: [Numerous spelling errors ignored until the basic concept is clarified.] </pedant>
csea, Sep 19 2007
  

       <mitchell&webb>"Ooh, and that's a bad miss."</m&w>
hippo, Sep 19 2007
  

       When you also take into account spin and table friction the numbers will probably get silly.
marklar, Sep 19 2007
  

       I think that [Texticle] has it, you will never know if the result is exactly the result desired by the player or simply the result that is good enough, regardless of what it looks like to the observer.
the dog's breakfast, Sep 19 2007
  

       I think that the basic maths would be straightforward (no spin, nap etc.)   

       For "fun":
Take, for example, a shot to a red ball, and the red ball is 0.5m from the pocket. The ball is 52.5mm diameter, and the pocket is (say) 80mm wide. The shot is straight (balls in line).
  

       To not touch the sides of the pocket, the white ball must hit the red within 2.8mm either side of the center of the red ball. For a distance of 0.5m from the pocket, this contact patch stays at 5.6mm. The difference is that for a cut, this contact patch is angled. For the finest cut, this contact patch appears to be 0.08mm across.   

       In the straight ball configuration, the angle of a white ball 2m away would need to be within +/- 0.009 degrees.
Ling, Sep 19 2007
  

       Thanks for the link, [csea]. Next let's address reliability.
normzone, Sep 20 2007
  

       Whose?
zeno, Sep 21 2007
  
      
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