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Ep 92: Natural Experiments and Second-Order Pandemic Effects
The Tennis Abstract Podcast
English - January 27, 2021 05:00 - 50 minutes - 1 Byte - ★★★★★ - 22 ratingsSports tennis analytics stats statistics tactics wimbledon us open australian open roland garros roger federer Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Previous Episode: Ep 91: Book Club: A Handful of Summers by Gordon Forbes
Carl and I dig into the opportunity generated by the Covid-19 pandemic to study natural experiments in sports. Many of the things we used to take for granted--stadiums full of fans, weekly travel schedules, consistent training opportunities--have been disrupted for some or all players, in tennis and other major sports. We consider what we can learn about home-court advantage, the predictability of results, the role of unchanging venues, and even the speed of play, by comparing pre-pandemic numbers with their corresponding figures since sports got back underway. We also wonder about the limitations of these sorts of studies, because there are always confounding variables. The biggest confounder of all: the pandemic itself.