Explore whether a new golf ball design gave better performance than the currently available one
Par Inc., is a major manufacturer of golf equipment. Management believes that Par’s market share could be increased with the introduction of a cut-resistant, longer-lasting golf ball. Therefore, the research group at Par has been investigating a new golf ball coating designed to resist cuts and provide a more durable ball. The tests with the coating have been promising. One of the researchers voiced concern about the effect of the new coating on driving distances. Par would like the new cut-resistant ball to offer driving distances comparable to those of the current-model golf ball. To compare the driving distances for the two balls, 40 balls of both the new and current models were subjected to distance tests. The testing was performed with a mechanical hitting machine so that any difference between the mean distances for the two models could be attributed to a difference in the design.
We conducted a series of statistical analyses to compare the driving distances of the current and new golf balls. Data from 40 samples for each ball were collected, and we performed normality checks using the Shapiro-Wilk test. We then applied paired, independent, and one-sample t-tests to assess whether there were significant differences in performance between the two models. All analyses were logged and results were saved for reproducibility.
The new golf ball does not demonstrate a statistically significant improvement over the current model based on the samples tested. The confidence interval for the difference includes zero, suggesting that the new ball could be slightly worse or slightly better, but the data are inconclusive.
These findings provide an evidence-based assessment for Par Inc. when evaluating new golf ball designs. Decisions about product adoption or marketing claims should be guided by this statistical analysis rather than assumptions about performance.
The main limitation of this study is the sample size. With only 40 drives per ball, the confidence intervals are relatively wide, limiting the ability to detect small differences in performance. Additionally, other factors such as environmental conditions may not have been controlled in this analysis.
Future studies should include larger sample sizes to reduce uncertainty and increase statistical power. Testing under a variety of conditions and with multiple players would also help assess the consistency and reliability of any observed differences.
We plan to expand this experiment with more drives and additional golf ball prototypes. As more data are collected, we will update the analysis to provide a clearer understanding of performance differences and potentially refine our statistical approach to include effect size and power calculations.