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A statistician plays darts
Author(s) -
Tibshirani Ryan J.,
Price Andrew,
Taylor Jonathan
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.103
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-985X
pISSN - 0964-1998
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-985x.2010.00651.x
Subject(s) - statistician , computer science , gaussian , variable (mathematics) , artificial intelligence , algorithm , operations research , econometrics , machine learning , mathematical optimization , statistics , mathematics , mathematical analysis , physics , quantum mechanics
Summary. Darts is enjoyed both as a pub game and as a professional competitive activity. Yet most players aim for the highest scoring region of the board, regardless of their level of skill. By modelling a dart throw as a two‐dimensional Gaussian random variable, we show that this is not always the optimal strategy. We develop a method, using the EM algorithm, for a player to obtain a personalized heat map, where the bright regions correspond to the aiming locations with high (expected) pay‐offs. This method does not depend in any way on our Gaussian assumption, and we discuss alternative models as well.