Re:Becoming a Chess Grandmaster
by majormajor on Monday July 26, 2021 @05:37PM
(#27965825)
That's true, we could be separated by millions of people but at the same time only, say, a year's worth of two-hours-a-week practice.
But in the absence of a reliable way to measure absolute skill, the z score one does seem about as good as we can get, though it can't truly answer something like "Lebron vs Jordan" - and you also would get different numbers depending on which population you picked. Population of the world, population of the US, population of the basketball-playing world, population of people who play basketball at least once a month? That's gonna change the denominator for the percentiles for the Scalabrines and Lebrons both.
But in the absence of a reliable way to measure absolute skill, the z score one does seem about as good as we can get, though it can't truly answer something like "Lebron vs Jordan" - and you also would get different numbers depending on which population you picked. Population of the world, population of the US, population of the basketball-playing world, population of people who play basketball at least once a month? That's gonna change the denominator for the percentiles for the Scalabrines and Lebrons both.