Comments on: Handicap History Chart

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:42:48 +0000

Jan – There was no seriousness there. My tongue was in my cheek when I said that. If there had been an emoticon for that, I’d have used it, instead of rolling my eyes.

… mrt

By: Jan

Jan — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:07:15 +0000

Who says? there is no reason to believe he will always get better? Don’t we all get older, or perhaps if you overlaid info on hours billed or such, you might find a trend that says when Dick is busy he can’t practice his golf and goes off form, potentially wildly of in the long term as he gets older.

Having indirectly criticised his golf I would say that there is nothing wrong with his trending. If it goes more than 5% off you might even be tempted to call it statistically significant (albeit the sample set of 1 is a bit too low in this case)

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 21:21:09 +0000

Thufir -

I believe you are correct. Dick shows a parabolic trend, and of course his handicap must asymptotically approach zero.

… mrt

By: Dick Kusleika

Dick Kusleika — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 19:22:45 +0000

What does “no statistically supportable trend” mean? How can I know when a trendline is appropriate and when it’s not?

By: Pat

Pat — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:09:45 +0000

I’d change the transparacy of the bars so the gridlines are visible in the even years.

By: Thufir

Thufir — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 01:54:35 +0000

May I make another suggestion, remove the trend line. Looking at the data provided, there is no reason to suspect the trend. Most you can say is there is the mean changes in 2007 and 2008. There is no statistically supportable trend, especially a complex trend such as a quadratic.