Never mind ‘statistical anomalies‘ and what have you; there were many ties at the Debrecen 2012 European Swimming Championships, but according to Omega only because they are not allowed to time the athletes to the 1/10,100th of a second. Read Reuters:
“We had in the European championships a lot of discussions about the ties,” he explained poolside on Wednesday as Olympic hopefuls went through their training routines in the lanes behind him.
Huerzeler said Omega had done more detailed analysis of those ties with their data and discovered that, timed to 1/1,000th of a second, only one remained. At 1/10,000th there were none.
And no, it wouldn’t be a good idea to go below the hundredth of a second:
“They are talking about measuring the thousandths again but that is not correct,” said Huerzeler. “One thousandth of a second is 1.7 millimetres.
“And who gives me the guarantee that each lane in the construction of a pool is precise to the millimetre? The tolerances in the pool are in centimetres…the thousandth is only feasible if everybody is swimming in the same line.”
As an engineer, I’m with the Omega man on this one. Also because he has an awesome name :-P
(Pretty sure the Moon landings were a statistical anomaly too)
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