Australian Open tennis; grunting update

Lots of chatter among Australian Open commentators about the noise tennis players make while they play, and two shriekers have made it to the women's final. The noise has got to be a distraction, making a player unable to hear the sound the grunting player's racquet makes striking the ball, something that can tell you a lot. But the players seem not to mind so much, as the NY Times reports. The story says:

Asked about the issue of grunting in women’s tennis, the retired five-time major champion Martina Hingis said in a news conference: “If you keep winning, you don’t think about it. The moment you’re losing, it’s probably more distracting.”

Here's an earlier post raising the issue. No new studies, but I will watch for them. And there's lots of information out there about tennis match statistics; I'll be exploring that in a later post.

School rating and sports ranking methodology (and tennis)

New York City's Department of Education engages in an extensive, and widely reported, school rating and report card system. It gives elementary schools a progress report rating from A to F based on several criteria including student progress and student performance on state tests. Elementary school students must submit to state proficiency testing each year. The Department of Education looks at both individual proficiency and overall progress. The problem, of course, for schools where many children are reading and doing math at or above grade level, is that it is impossible to show lots of progress (since they're already doing well, and there's an upper limit to how well anyone can do, it's hard to show progress). There's also an issue with the Department of Education's comparative metric.

I've occasionally thought that the Association of Tennis Professionals ranking methodology would provide some guidance or useful ideas for the folks who develop and report the New York City elementary school annual ratings. It's not an entirely fanciful notion. Tennis players must enter tournaments, and earn ranking points for progressing through the elimination rounds. Professional tennis and elementary education are not really analogous, of course. But all the same, the tennis rankings, while complex, take account of players who finished the previous year high in the rankings - and therefore can't move up.

Now I've come across another website, Greatest Sporting Nation, whose methodology New York City Department of Education might also want to take a look at. The Greatest Sporting Nation purports to identify which country competing in international competitions is the greatest overall at sports. (It also ranks countries on a per capita basis, as well ranking each sport, and male and female athletes, separately.) The website is well written and explains itself quite clearly. The first metric I'd suggest the New York City Department of Education take a look at is the Global Ranking, a ranking based on performances over the previous four years. Looking at a longer time frame might give New York City parents a better sense of how the school their kids attend has been performing. I'd also like the schools to take a look at the Per Capita Cup, which measures performance taking account of population size.

Just saying.

Andrew Thompson talks culture

The "Corner Office" column that the NY Times runs on Sundays is often interesting reading, but I normally don't link to them. This week's, a condensed conversation with Andrew Thompson of Proteus Biomedical, is different: read it here. What Thompson says throughout about creating culture is interesting: he's very clear about how important it is to recognize failure, and not punish it, because without trying new things you won't be able to identify approaches, or ideas, that work. It's also worth reading on to see what he says about horizontal structures, and the true function of leadership. (And there's a nice tennis metaphor, one that can be carried even further: you don't want to let the person on the other side of the net get inside your head. It's as true in the workplace as it is on the tennis court.) The attitudes Thompson brings to his business definitely have a place in the not-for-profit world.

The science of grunting. Really.

Several websites have run articles lately on the noise players at the US Open and other tennis tournaments make when they hit the ball. And, it turns out, they may be on to something. Discovery News reports that a post-doc at the University of British Columbia found that a sound made as a ball is struck significantly slows response time, and affects responses.

Here's a link to a Slate story about the first grunting tennis player, Victoria Heinicke.

And a modern example: