Archery is one of the oldest human skills which is still practiced today. It was a survival skill in Ancient Egypt, and it has now become recreations and sports. Archery first appeared in the 1900 Olympics, disappeared after 1920, and reappeared in 1972. Archery needed an innovative format to avoid exclusion from the Olympics, and the format has changed constantly. Assuming 64 archers starting the competition, the total number of arrows needed to determine the winner has reduced from 18,432 in 1972 to approximately 6,000 in 2012. The head-to-head match was first implemented in the 1992 Olympics, and the set system was implemented in the 2012 Olympics to increase the level of excitement and unpredictability. From the statistical perspective, however, a good tournament design should have a high probability of replicating the same winner (the best archer) with a smaller expected number of arrows. In this article, we demonstrate the impact of the rule changes via simulations and introduce an alternative rule which can increase the probability of replicating the same winner with even a smaller expected number of arrows than the current rule has. We relate this potential rule to Wald's sequential probability ratio test.
© Copyright 2025 CHANCE. Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.