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Feedback: Excessive precision at rugby World Cup

9 January 2013

Âé¶¹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

(Image: Paul McDevitt)

Excessive precision at the rugby union World Cup

FEEDBACK doesn’t pretend to understand how the calculates for the rugby union 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…

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