Quoted from PinMonk:I think that's getting a little cray. Absolute hardness isn't really necessary for these purposes (just surfing above the "it's all in your head" propaganda and confirming that SOMETHING, likely the wood, has changed at Stern). The test with the $10k machine the guy did on a bunch of old and new playfields show *relative* hardness to each other right now, in the same environment (so shared humidity, etc). It confirms that virtually every Stern, and all the recent ones are softer than JJP, and visuals of a playfield craters on a number of the newer Sterns (notably BM'66 and Ghostbusters) bear that out.
Quoted from PinMonk:All of that is a distraction from the fact that most of the Sterns (but not all, KISS LE is pretty great, GoT Pre is good, Ghostbusters is bad) from around the same timeframe are a LOT softer than JJP PFs from the same timeframe, all of them stored in the same home environment. The RELATIVE differences are the POINT and if JJP takes up moisture slower or dries faster, leading to a harder test, great. That doesn't change the fact that the JJP PFs are much harder RELATIVE to Sterns of the same era in the same environment. That's all that's being established. Stern PFs have bigger craters in general than they used to and compared to JJP playfields. The vintage ones you can make your drying argument. I don't think it holds water in this, but it's at least a possibility.
And we're only talking factory product. Not opening the restoration PFs can of worms because that's all a distraction from Stern cheaping out on PF wood and being caught with verifiable tests.
Keep banging that FAKE NEWS drum . LOL at your continued insistent ignorance with using a sample of two whole JJP pins to draw any conclusion. Again, basic math stats logic laughs at such comparisons; as if samples of one or two pins are representative of a manufacturer overall. And now adding anecdotal BM66 and GB visuals and cherry picking fallacy hilarity. The fact that you then continue with hyperbole and run with a sweeping generalization fallacy that "virtually every Stern, and all the recent ones are softer than JJP" is the trifecta and show us that your posts and opinions should be flushed down the toilet, where they belong. And what's all this about "recent" Sterns? That sample size for Stern is also basic math stat laughable and now we are at FAKE squared. Fake news king alert. Pinside reaps what it sows and logic is long gone. Maybe we need a graph.
Quoted from Procrastinator:A dozen playfields is more than enough to see there’s a difference. Again, I don’t know the reasoning, I just know the results. Could it be the clear, wood, moisture, etc? Sure. It can always be figured out, but the question is if it’s financially viable. The test was just done to see if there is a difference, and I believe it showed there is, backing up what some people thought they saw... I’m going to play it either way, but there is a difference in some playfields. The fact one of the softest readings had ghosting issues may be something, but a way more scientific approach would be needed to know for sure.
Quoted from Procrastinator:What a joke. If you can’t extrapolate data from a dozen readings, that’s on you. .. It was a simple and quick test to see if there was a difference. There was. The data is there for people to make up their own mind. You choose not to believe it, or believe it is so flawed that isn’t valid at all, then so be it. I did it for myself and shared the results...
LOL, what difference? The question that so many absolutely fail miserably at here is if the difference is actually "significant". Thanks to people with brains throughout human history, there's a discipline that has been developed to logically analyze and interpret data; it's called statistics.
Absolutely hilarious the gross logical fallacies and extremely basic logic fails all over this thread. Since no one has attempted to actually evaluate the results in a meaningful manner (the only meaningful manner is using actual statistical math analysis), all the talk of differences has been nothing more than WAG and BS. The numbers mean nothing, nada, zilch until someone actually actually and "properly" uses statistical analysis to see what the significance of the difference is. Any conclusions posted about any significant difference in this thread are FAKE NEWS.
A start could be to run with basic probability theory, consider the results indicative of a standard normal population and distribution and calculate the mean and standard deviation. Then look at how much variation there is for any one measured sample, based on the population mean, standard deviation and distribution, though it's still a crude estimate with lots of shortcomings as one is lumping all the different manufactures and types of pfs.... and over decades of production (as well as production changes). But it's much better than the FAKE CRAP many here are posting. From that one will be able to determine what the variance means in real terms with regards to the sample population and distribution. This is often reported as +- 1 SD, +- 2 SD, and +- 3 SD which correspond to the values that fall within 68%, 95%, and 99.7% of the distribution, respectively. And the only info you will get from this is an understanding of where and how a hardness result from any one pf relatively compares to the overall distribution and average measured hardness from the 12 pfs of various ages from various manufacturers.
Where some here have been separating out pf types and/or # of plys and/or manufacturers into even smaller sample sizes and then advancing the idea that there are differences (often repeatedly)... is a sad joke. That's statistically ridiculous, ludicrous and hilarious. There simply is not enough data from which to generate any meaningful distribution of the sample population. FAKE NEWS.
For example, an average of three measurements may have a mean of 80. Does that mean a value of 30 is significantly different from those three measurements?..... Well, that depends. If those three measurements have values of 75, 80 and 85 (the mean of those three numbers is 80), many people will consider 30 to be significantly different. However, if the values of three measurements are 10, 70 and 160 (which gives the same mean of 80), then no... many people will not consider 30 to be significantly different. The distribution of the population and thus the standard deviation matters and such info is needed to draw basic conclusions. Ding, ding ding.