Basketball pitch

[Daniel Levitin <levitin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Watson asked why the crowds would converge on such specific
pitches.  According to Doug Hintzman's argument, this follows from the
statistics of large samples.  With a very large "n" (such as at a
basketball game) you would expect there to be very little variance
around the mean.  That's why it converges on "D" as opposed to some
wide range that might cover C#-D-D#.  And it's no more surprising that
the converging pitch would be the same at different basketball games
than to find a converging height for spectators at different games,
given a large "n."