There's A LOT of work left to do (Jayanth)

Hello Everybody,

As I detailed in my last post, I was very happy after summarizing all matches because it seemed as if the data proved that the Table Tennis played according to minimax, because the winning probabilities for serving to each side were virtually the same. That still can likely be true, but I going to have to go through a lot of work to try and prove it.

When I was recording data, I simply summarized matches rather than recording results point-by-point. Now this is all good for convenience, but people want to know how you got that data (i.e. which points were left serves/right serves). Therefore, I am in the process watching all the matches over again and recording each result point-by-point. It is fair to say this will probably take another 2.5-3 weeks, because for each point, I have to record, games, points, server, court, serve direction, winner, and point code, as well as having to note faults, set and match times, and coverage of games that was missing from the DVDs.

After that, I have to do the statistical tests to confirm the data results. That might take another week because there are several statistical tests that have to be run, not just the Chi-Squared tests.

And after that, I probably will have another three weeks or so to write the formal paper (which will require reading other minimax strategy papers to make sure the theory is correct) and the presentation. But all of this doesn't even take into account that I will be taking several music and college related trips over the next month in a half!

So much to do, but so little time! Now I know why really good academic papers take years to finalize.

-- Jayanth A.K.A Señor Juanito