How to Bake a Dispersion Pattern from Scratch

Image from Ecole polytechnique Université Paris-Saclay.I wanted to write about variance in golf here, but when I was reviewing my theoretical, idealized dispersion patterns, I realized it was effectively pointless to start discussing variance in golf without generating realistic dispersion patterns. These golf shot dispersion patterns represent the inherent variance in the game, so we need the model to reflect them before looking at birdies and blow-ups.Note: this is going to be very technical. There will be a lot of footnotes. For technical folks following along, I’ve opened the source for this dispersion pattern generator. I’ll try to break this up by adding the resulting dispersion patterns, and overlaying them onto the road hole at St Andrews.ShareThe road hole at St Andrews. We will use this as a model to illustrate the scale of these resulting dispersion patterns we generate. But First, DataTo build a shot dispersion model I’ll need data. The ultimate irony here is that plenty…