Stats Analysis: Correlations
So many factors contribute to the outcome of a darts match, from venue temperature and humidity to the shape of the flights used by the players, that it’s difficult to isolate one as the decisive factor.
Acquiring data on all these factors is an impossible task, but statistical analysis does at least allow us to exclude certain factors and silence speculation, narrowing down the list of contributors to match results in the long task of eventually identifying the critical ones.
Dart weights are, naturally, customized to the preferences and optimal performance of each player. There’s no telling what factors might influence a player to choose a light or a heavy dart, but there are elite players on all points of the weight spectrum.
“The most common weight among Tour Card Holders is 23g darts, but Stephen Bunting throws 18g darts and Ryan Searle, in keeping with his nickname ‘Heavy Metal,’ uses massive 32g darts.”
Could there be a hidden correlation between weights? Unsurprisingly, there is no cause to believe that lighter or heavier darts lead to higher averages or more 180s.
Setting aside the problem of the minimal variation of dart weights amongst professionals – more than three quarters of Tour Card Holders throw darts within a range of only 3 grams – a model meant to isolate the impact of dart weight could only explain 1% of the variation in averages and 3% of the variation in 180s per leg.
Age could plausibly be a factor in player performance – in almost all other sports, a 20-year-old player would be expected to surpass the achievements of both a 15-year-old and those of a 50-year-old, since younger players are still developing their talents and older players are struggling against the entropy of aging.
This is not necessarily so in darts, which has witnessed both a 17-year-old reach the World Championship final and a 52-year-old win the title.
“People have no advantage over older players, and vice versa, solely due to their ages.”
On this topic we can at least observe the performances of players representing a wide range of ages, from the aforementioned teenager Littler to the 60-year-old Steve Beaton. If there was a relationship between age and performance, we could see it.
But the conventional wisdom is correct – young players have no advantage over older players, and vice versa, solely due to their ages.
“What about the impact of ‘home soil’ on players’ performance, especially now that several Players Championship events per year are held in Germany?”
Here, at last, we have a reasonable external factor that may affect how often players win and what they average.
“They might even feel a sense of patriotic honor in facing foreign opponents in their own country.”
The answer is, surprisingly, yes, but a negative one! German players actually have had a worse track record on their home soil than they have had in English Players Championship events.
From legs won (46.9% in Germany, 50.5% in England) to averages (89.66 in Germany, 91.64 in England), in almost every statistic, the German players perform worse on home soil.
