(Image: Paul McDevitt)
Excessive precision at the rugby union World Cup
FEEDBACK doesn’t pretend to understand how the International Rugby Board calculates rankings for the rugby union World Cup competition. We’re just about aware that the ball is roughly ellipsoid and that in the past the players tended to be posher than in the other kind of rugby (league).
However, we’re deeply intrigued by this update from the World Cup website forwarded by Tim Hely: “Argentina and Samoa both had a rating of 78.71 but when expanded to 15 decimal places the difference between the two was minimal (78.709236088306938 to 78.708853582562098).” This, apparently, enabled the…
