At the British Open golf tournament today, conditions are much tougher in the afternoon than they were in the morning, as a heavy wind has kicked up. Players switch starting times between the Thursday and Friday rounds, so if the pattern had been the same each day things would even out, but it happens the conditions were roughly the same all day Thursday. So the players on the course right now are at a distinct disadvantage. Would we say that this is “unfair”?
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear someone use that word, but I think as the words are commonly used we would call this “unlucky” rather than “unfair.” Now, naturally, substantial luck factors are considered undesirable in a competition, but not nearly as undesirable as rules that favor some competitors a priori, for instance if higher-ranked golfers were allowed to choose their tee times. Luck vs. unfairness is analogous to the error/bias distinction in statistics, where bias is considered more serious (but excessive error can also render a model useless.)
Within the realm of luck, I think competitors are most willing to accept luck that is clearly an “act of God,” as here. That is, when the tee times were posted last week, thanks to the Thursday/Friday flip everyone had equal expectation. So the luck can’t be traced to lots drawn by the organizers, but solely to random weather patterns. The form of “luck” in sports that draws the most ire, if luck it is, is poor officiating. Now, I happen to think that most officials are reasonably unbiased and make mostly random errors, but just as in statistics one can never prove lack of bias (it’s the null hypothesis!) So competitors and fans are left with no conclusive evidence as to whether they have suffered from error or bias. In such cases, I think there is a cognitive bias towards, well, perceiving bias. This is part of a general tendency to overexplain and overinfer from random events.
1 comment
August 6, 2010 at 9:58 am
Hermann Mazard
I don’t think fairness is the goal of governing body so much as the long term longevity of the game. If certain rules consistently produce a biased result in favor a distinct group of athletes, then those rules should be re-examined.
When bias is allowed to persist, polarity amongst fans sets in and the size of the viewing audience ultimately shrinks. In the absence of bias, parity sets in which produces the largest viewing audience, which is what advertisers want.
Instead of looking at individual rules and judging for luck or fairness, lets look at the impact of those rules. Rules that consistently favor a distinct set of golfers (lefties, trains with Tiger Woods, uses Nike balls, tees off in after 10:30am), should warrant an examination. For rules to change, they should also show that in the absence of the bias, athletic performance would produce a consistently different result. The NFL Rules Committee does a great job of it, producing the huge audiences. Most cities sell out every 70,000 seat stadium and television audiences are growing.
Golf rules, banking rules or political policy can surely benefit from a similar approach.