BAD LINE CALLS.

BAD LINE CALLS. I have previously posted (for example, here) on error rates for sports officials. The Wall Street Journal recently alerted me to a study of tennis line calls by researchers at the University of California at Davis (see here and here). They reviewed some 4400 points chosen at random from the 2007 Wimbledon championship and found 83 bad line calls. The articles about the study seem to be most interested in the finding that a disproportionate number of incorrect “out” calls were made–70 as opposed to only 13 incorrect “in” calls. I am more interested that about two per cent of points are affected by errors. This is a higher error rate than I would have expected.