Sports

Sports questions are unusually estimable because the rules constrain the answer. A match has a fixed length, a team has a fixed size, a season has a fixed number of games — so most figures here can be derived from the structure of the sport rather than recalled from a record book.

For records, the useful move is to work from a rate. A sprint record follows from the distance and an average speed, a marathon record from a pace per kilometre, a scoring record from a per-game total. Converting between a total and a rate is the single most reusable technique in this category.

The recurring theme is that a number in a sport is usually a rule rather than a fact. Distances, weights, round counts and team sizes come from historical accidents that hardened into standards, and several of the most famous figures here — a marathon distance, a golf course, a shot put weight — are frozen decisions rather than anything optimal.