Federer’s 54%: Tennis stats explained
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 July 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How can tennis star Roger Federer have won only 54% of the points he played, but been the best player in the world? Jeff Sackmann, the tennis stats brain behind tennisabstract.com, explains to Tim Harford how probability works in the sport.
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Debbie Richford Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: Nigel Appleton Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | He is Brian Cox. |
| 0:02.8 | Hello. |
| 0:03.3 | And he understands science. |
| 0:05.4 | I'm Robin Ince and I don't understand it quite so much. |
| 0:09.0 | Could he tell us something about the nature of matter? |
| 0:11.3 | Nope. |
| 0:12.0 | Okay, good. |
| 0:13.2 | Together we'll be joined by a collection of experts and non-expert guests. |
| 0:18.6 | What's going on? |
| 0:19.8 | Don't you know. |
| 0:21.6 | Taking a look at some of the most wonderful things in the scientific world. |
| 0:25.8 | Science with Funny Bits, The Infinite Monkey Cage on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.4 | Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast. |
| 0:35.0 | We're your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life. |
| 0:38.0 | And I'm Tim Harford. Harvard. That's all thanks to former World Number One Roger Fedra, who earlier this year in a speech that has since gone viral |
| 0:56.7 | regaled the graduates of Dartmouth College in the US with advice on how to pick yourself up after a knockback. |
| 1:04.0 | There was one thing in particular he said that made the more or less team sit up and listen. |
| 1:10.0 | And tennis, perfection is impossible. in the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career I won |
| 1:19.8 | almost 80% of those matches now Now, I have a question for you. |
| 1:24.8 | What percentage of points do you think I want in those matches? |
| 1:29.7 | Only 54%, in other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play. |
| 1:38.0 | A striking claim. We wanted to know more. |
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