Graduated Handicap Tables (PDF)
In a recent letter to the Archery UK magazine, the mathematician and archer David Lane announced that he was releasing the algorithm for calculating archery handicap tables into the public domain, so we asked him for a copy. Don’t read it if you’re scared of maths, but here’s some interesting quotes:
- “An archer with a Handicap of 0 is achieving an rms deviation of 0.789mrad while a Handicap of 100 corresponds to an rms deviation of 27.107mrad. Note that the limiting resolution of the unaided human eye is about 0.5mrad.”
- “Each Handicap step therefore represents a change in the archer’s skill of 3.6%.”
- “Many people have queried that the Tables contain ‘impossible’ scores (1295, 1293, 1291, etc.) for the imperial rounds. My reply has always been ‘the National Statistics show that the average family includes 2.4 children.’”
This paper is what has provided us with our “Beat Your Handicap” score predictor feature on the individual rounds pages and the score estimate by handicap on the classifications pages.