[CAUT] strikeweight

[Tim Coates]

Ken,

Thank you for taking the time and interest to collect data.  It only  
confirms what I had found unscientifically.  I prefer to sort by  
pitch not weight.  I appreciate Chris Soliday's scratching method to  
find the pitch.  Scratching lets even a novice get up to speed  
quickly when sorting.

Thanks,

Tim Coates

On Sep 15, 2008, at 8:21 AM, Zahringer, Kenneth A. wrote:

> Hey, All,
>
> Well, I hope everyone hasn't completely forgotten about this  
> thread.  A
> couple of months ago there was a discussion of sorting shanks by pitch
> vs strike weight.  Albert Picknell took some measurements on a set of
> Renner shanks and I offered to do some data analysis.  My summer was
> pretty hectic and I just now got around to doing the analysis.  A more
> complete report is attached, but here is the bottom line:
>
> Pitch and SW aren't related much at all.  I was a little surprised at
> this, but I looked at it every way I could think of and the lack of
> correlation was consistent.  According to this data, whatever factors
> influence the pitch we hear when we tap or scratch a shank, the  
> mass is
> not particularly important.  To say it another way, if you sort a  
> set of
> shanks by SW it's different from sorting them by pitch.  Statistical
> methods can't say whether one sorting method is better than the other,
> or even if "better" is a meaningful concept here.  They also can't say
> whether one sorting method is more or less likely to get you the
> particular results you want with a particular piano.  This much is  
> very
> clear, however: pitch and SW are different things.
>
> The attachment goes into some of the gory details for anyone who is
> interested.  If anyone wants to pursue this and furnish more data or
> suggest different ways of taking measurements, I will be happy to do
> more analysis.  I will try to do it in a more timely manner in the
> future.  If you have anything for me, please contact me at
> ZahringerK at missouri.edu.  Regrettably, I will no longer be a  
> subscriber
> to the CAUT list; I have my hands full with graduate school.
>
> My best to you all,
> Ken Zahringer, RPT
>
> Used to be:
> Piano Technician
> School of Music
> University of Missouri
>
> But now I'm:
> Graduate Teaching Assistant
> Department of Economics
> University of Missouri<CAUT Data Analysis.doc>