AN ARITHMETICAL CURIO.

Shannon News, 5 January 1923, Page 3

AN ARITHMETICAL CURIO.

i gather from the Cologne Gazette, the organ of the British troops in the Army of Occupation (writes Robert Iv. Risk, in the- Weekly Scotsman) that many half-crowns and shillings have changed hands lately over ibis arithmetical curiosity. For the bene-

fit of people who do not take an interest in cricket, I may explain that a bowler’s average is arrived at by dividing the number of runs hit off him by the number of wickets taken by him. Now, if at the end of the month two bowlers have these figures to their names:—

Rhodes ... 28 wickets for .60 runs Hitch 28 wickets for 60 runs obviously their averages are identical. You are to suppose that in the next match Rhodes takes four wickets tor 36 runs, and Hitch one wicket for 27 runs. As Rhodes’s four new wickets have cost only 0 runs each, and Hitch’s one new 7 wicket 27 runs, everybody would say that Rhodes must have a better average than Hitch. People who said that this must be so all lose their bets. The surprising fact is that Rhodes’s 32 wickets tor 96 runs are of precisely the same value per wicket as Hitch’s 29 for 37. You can see for yourself that it is so. Why it should be so I leave to the higher mathematicians of George Wnt- [ son's and tlie university to explain