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JOURNAL
OF
SPORTS SCIENCE &
MEDICINE
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Research
article
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THE EFFICIENCY OF TENNIS DOUBLES SCORING SYSTEMS |
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Geoff Pollard1 and Graham Pollard2  |
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1Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia 2Faculty of Information Sciences and Engineering, University of Canberra, Australia |
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© Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (2010) 9, 393 - 397 |
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| ABSTRACT | |||
| In this paper a family of scoring systems for tennis doubles for
testing the hypothesis that pair A is better than pair B versus the alternative
hypothesis that pair B is better than A, is established. This family or
benchmark of scoring systems can be used as a benchmark against which the
efficiency of any doubles scoring system can be assessed. Thus, the formula
for the efficiency of any doubles scoring system is derived. As in tennis
singles, one scoring system based on the play-the-loser structure is shown
to be more efficient than the benchmark systems. An expression for the relative
efficiency of two doubles scoring systems is derived. Thus, the relative
efficiency of the various scoring systems presently used in doubles can
be assessed. The methods of this paper can be extended to a match between
two teams of 2, 4, 8, …doubles pairs, so that it is possible to establish
a measure for the relative efficiency of the various systems used for tennis
contests between teams of players.
Key words: Efficiency of tennis scoring systems, play-the-loser, play-the-winner, volleyball, team tennis. |
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