I've already posted once about the dead heat in the Olympic Trials, but this post I found even more fascinating.

Here's the part that struck me:

Swim races, which use touchpads to determine each swimmers’s finish time, have shown that that clock's precision is greater than that of pool construction.

Huh? Not every lane is exactly the same length, even in Olympic level facilities. At normal human speeds it doesn't matter, but at world class athlete speeds, the small difference in lanes actually matter if you take the time out to enough decimal places.

Measurement is huge in my job. It brings up an intersting question: if we measure close enough are we letting the size of the pool decide the winner?

With the ability to measure every little thing to a very detailed degree, are there some measurements that reflect small differences that have nothing to do with what our client is doing. I don't know what that means yet, but I'm thinking about t.