dangermouse
Well-known member
Prompted somewhat by this article http://www.fishingmagic.com/forums/...eeping-records-learning-lessons-doc-spot.html
How many people on here keep an angling diary? What kind of information do you keep in it?
I don`t keep a diary the main reason being I`m just not that serious an angler. However I wonder just how useful they are in terms of improving your fishing. I`m no statistician but I know a little bit about the subject from my time at college and more so from my poker playing days.
In poker it`s reckoned that for a sample to be statistically significant you need to play at least 10,000 hands, preferably more.
So if you transfered those numbers to fishing it would mean you`d have to fish everyday for almost 30 years to reach that sample size. So in reality few anglers will ever fish enough to accrue a significant sample of data for analysis. Of course you may be able to draw some conclusions from smaller samples, some of those conclusions will even prove correct. However, given that the human brain is very good at spotting patterns even when they don`t really exist, many of those conclusions will be incorrect/flawed.
Thoughts?
How many people on here keep an angling diary? What kind of information do you keep in it?
I don`t keep a diary the main reason being I`m just not that serious an angler. However I wonder just how useful they are in terms of improving your fishing. I`m no statistician but I know a little bit about the subject from my time at college and more so from my poker playing days.
In poker it`s reckoned that for a sample to be statistically significant you need to play at least 10,000 hands, preferably more.
So if you transfered those numbers to fishing it would mean you`d have to fish everyday for almost 30 years to reach that sample size. So in reality few anglers will ever fish enough to accrue a significant sample of data for analysis. Of course you may be able to draw some conclusions from smaller samples, some of those conclusions will even prove correct. However, given that the human brain is very good at spotting patterns even when they don`t really exist, many of those conclusions will be incorrect/flawed.
Thoughts?