Was margin of error of shots ever charted?

CueAndMe

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Have any of the science-oriented folks such as Dr. Dave or Bob Jewett ever calculated and charted the pocketability or margin of error of shots from various angles and distances?
 
Have any of the science-oriented folks such as Dr. Dave or Bob Jewett ever calculated and charted the pocketability or margin of error of shots from various angles and distances?

Wouldn't that be impossible to do due to wouldn't it be different for every person?
 
Yes, Jack Koehler has a section on what he calls permissible error in "The Science of Pocket Billiards." Highly recommended.
 
Have any of the science-oriented folks such as Dr. Dave or Bob Jewett ever calculated and charted the pocketability or margin of error of shots from various angles and distances?

Yes, I did a simple calculation of required aiming accuracy versus cue ball and object ball placement. For a spot shot your hand placement has to be correct within about 1mm.

Dr. Dave has a plot of corner pocket size versus approach angle and has incorporated that into his plots of relative accuracy required to pocket a ball from various locations and angles. This is table dependent, of course. I'm sure he has plots up somewhere.
 
Yes, I did a simple calculation of required aiming accuracy versus cue ball and object ball placement. For a spot shot your hand placement has to be correct within about 1mm.

Dr. Dave has a plot of corner pocket size versus approach angle and has incorporated that into his plots of relative accuracy required to pocket a ball from various locations and angles. This is table dependent, of course. I'm sure he has plots up somewhere.

So what do you to include the variance from player to player?
 
Check out the Pool Shot Analyzer java app, you can get it from the Downloads page of www.cue-md.com.

It give you lots of stats about a shot including error margin. It uses Dr. Dave's plots for pocket size from various approach angles in its calculations.
 
So what do you to include the variance from player to player?

I think you are confusing margin of error with error rate. Margin of error is "how much can you "miss" by and still make the shot" while error RATE will incorporate the skills of the player because it is more "how often do you "miss" by enough to miss the shot"

You and I have exactly the same margin for error on the spot shot, for example, but I'd bet your error rate is way way smaller than mine.

Does that help at all?
 
Check out the Pool Shot Analyzer java app, you can get it from the Downloads page of www.cue-md.com.

It give you lots of stats about a shot including error margin. It uses Dr. Dave's plots for pocket size from various approach angles in its calculations.

Cool. Thanks!

Edit: Wow! Excellent little app! It shows how accurate we can be as shooters when we're on. I was practicing a shot the other day that I eventually was making half the time that according to the app has a 0.1 degree cue-ball-to-object-ball margin of error.
 
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Since the "margin of error allowed" is so small... I find it amazing that players have become so very talented, to overcome that obstacle. Shooting a ball 80 inches away, at a target of 20 thousands of an inch, is so gratifying. Gives us all hope to someday play that well.
 
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