Photo finish, objective or subjective?

[KevinM]

Interesting. Remember the world indoors a few years ago when the Wisconsin hurdler (forget his name, lost to football - Pego or Daisy?) threw his arm out at the finish?

Reggie Torian

[proofs in the pudd'in]

Well I just hope that IF and WHEN the first white guy runs a sub-10 that it is not 9.99

Speaking of which where is the photo finish of Marian Woronin.

[Powell]

Speaking of which where is the photo finish of Marian Woronin.

I haven't seen the picture, but the photo-finish time was 9.992, so in a way he WAS the first white man under 10.

[proofs in the pudd'in]

Oh no we need to contact Ato and let him know he's got a white guy in that sub-10 club.
But then again he is already highly suspicious.

How did they justify rounding that one down. Conspiracy against the white man. Yeh thats it!!!

[ppalmer]

Re: photo timing

In the few situations that I know about, they seem to always post photos from the same side, not necessarily the most definitive one.

With that in mind what do you make of the third photo? Looks to me like the other angle would be worse.

The angle is fine and it is an easy picture to read. I probably would have moved the cursor a bit toward a slower time, but for last place perhaps the reading was not done as carefully as usual. (I confess that does happen sometimes.)

Looking at real pictures, even good ones -- and the ones posted here are pretty good -- it is sometimes difficult or impossible to honestly place the cursor to the plus or minus .001 accuracy. That is fine since it gets rounded to .01, except for the rare cases where the uncertainty might be between say 23.999 and 24.001 which would often be imperceptible differences in photos, yet round differently (24.00 and 24.01). Like everything else in the real world, one just has to do the best one can.

I don't see why people seem to freak out about uncertainties in timing. Maybe those who do should try marking the shot or discus for a change.

Pat Palmer

[Daisy]

Re: photo timing

I don't see why people seem to freak out about uncertainties in timing. Maybe those who do should try marking the shot or discus for a change.

First, i agree with your observation that the last place runners time was probably not a high priority with respect to accuracy.

Second, I don't freak out about these inaccuracies. i think track and field judges do a great job when trying to get it right. What i freak out about is people that think it is more accurate than it really is. A non track example would be some one measuring a table with a ruler to 3 decimal places (nearest mm) and claiming it is accurate. We must learn to live with the fact that there is error in these measurements.

[dukehjsteve]

Re: photo timing

I don't see why people seem to freak out about uncertainties in timing. Maybe those who do should try marking the shot or discus for a change.

Pat Palmer[/quote]

That is certainly true, particularly in the throws! Plus as I noted a few years ago, think of the variability in shot put measuring purely due to the softness/hardness of the ground where the shot makes a dent !

I used this phrase yesterday..l" the devil is in the details". All this agonizing over 1/1000 ths of seconds. Meaningless statistics. Maybe it was better when everything was rounded up to 1/10ths, or even farther back, to 1/5ths !

[EPelle]

When the machine works better than the brain:

• Event 10 Boys 110 Meter Hurdles Frosh-Soph
  ================================================== =================
  Name Year School Prelims H#
  ================================================== =================
  Preliminaries
  1 Brewer, Arnux Logan HS 9.73q 2
  2 Chandler, Nick Newark HS 9.91q 1
  3 Godfrey, Danny Logan HS 10.25q 1
  4 Gailey, Mark Irvington High S 10.52q 2
  5 Gonzalez, Sammy Irvington High S 10.63q 1
  6 McRae, Brian Mission San Jose 11.18q 2
  7 Sharma, Vishal John F. Kennedy 11.28q 2
  8 Ahmad, Aqeed American High Sc 11.47q 1
  9 Tse, Kyle Mission San Jose 11.70 2
  10 Lee, Elias Mission San Jose 11.80 2
  11 Chang, Robin Mission San Jose 12.10 1
  12 Nguyen, Alan Irvington High S 12.35 2
  13 Bell, Marcus American High Sc 12.53 2
  13 Amerson, Alex Logan HS 12.53 1
  
  Event 10 Boys 110 Meter Hurdles Frosh-Soph
  ================================================== =====================
  Name Year School Finals Points
  ================================================== =====================
  Finals
  1 Chandler, Nick Newark HS 9.97 10
  2 Brewer, Arnux Logan HS 9.99 8
  3 Godfrey, Danny Logan HS 10.34 6
  4 Gailey, Mark Irvington High S 10.57 4
  5 Gonzalez, Sammy Irvington High S 10.73 2
  6 Sharma, Vishal John F. Kennedy 10.77 1
  7 McRae, Brian Mission San Jose 10.87
  8 Ahmad, Aqeed American High Sc 11.12

• Event 12 Girls 100 Meter Hurdles JV
  ================================================== =====================
  Name Year School Finals Points
  ================================================== =====================
  Finals
  1 Jackson, Crystal Logan HS 9.39 10
  2 Zamora, Renee American High Sc 10.39 8
  3 Wong, Dawn American High Sc 10.62 6
  4 Stewart, Julia Logan HS 10.96 4
  5 Tran, Alyssa Mission San Jose 11.01 2
  6 Siegel, Amanda Irvington High S 11.17 1
  7 Quan, Megan American High Sc 11.20

http://dyestatcal.com/statemeet/6track/NorthCoast/Leagues/MVAL/Finals.htm

[tafnut]

computers don't lie, man!

[SQUACKEE]

What was the wind?

[EPelle]

Get this: the wind was -36,4 m/s :-)

[SQUACKEE]

Making those times even more impressive. Hey some tracks are just fast, you know like atlanta.

[tandfman]

It's pretty obvious from looking at the full meet results that the varsity 100 and 110m races were run at the correct distances. They must run the JV and frosh-soph divisions at a shorter distances. That would mean that the only error was in the headings above those absurd results, which could possibly (and I'm just guessing) be due to the fact that the event headings must be chosen from a menu that has only standard race distances.

[JRM]

Get this: the wind was -36,4 m/s :-)

Guess they don't know how to read a wind gauge, either! Either that, or their incredibly resistant to 131 km/h head-winds!

[EPelle]

Joke. Where is the emoticon?