Flyers - drop or not to drop"

[Intheshop]

Blessed to have a range out the shop door.

On load development; notes,repeatability,and understanding/diagnosing loading noise. Seems to be my guiding light.

 

[dgeesaman]

The content from the OP is good stuff, makes sense. Unfortunately I see no applicability to how I shoot. I’m not calculating R^2 values or regressing curve fits, where outlier data points skew the output of the experiment. Shooting groups is inherently noisy work and we just have to use our own best judgment to know when the data is telling a story that is sufficiently free of coincidence.

It was mentioned that flyers can be withheld if there is a causal explanation. For me that could be a wind gust, a jerked trigger (thanks guy in next lane with the brake), or observing the rifle recoil finishing in a different direction than the other shots. I think that makes sense if the exercise is about ballistic performance (load development, rimfire ammo testing, etc). But that’s about the only time I exclude a flyer.

I think there’s some maturity and accountability in counting everything that happens in sport. Golfers who don’t play it down are really limiting their ability to adapt, assess, and minimize the impact of unfortunate moments. Likewise as a shooter each flyer can teach us something and we need to be super careful to not miss the instructional value they provide.

 

[CharlieNC]

The science of statistics allows one to identify an outlier, as opposed to just having an opinion. Then it's up to the user to decide how to use that knowledge. Many use a outlier for their wallet group! It's not unusual for an outlier to provide very useful information, which is also a common approach.

 

[KMW 1954]

Seems I am reading two different sub-sets here.

One marking the accuracy and consistency of a load/gun and then one the accuracy and consistency of the shooter. Which in my mind are two distinct and separate entities.

If one is looking to define the load or gun then that gun needs to be in a fixed position rest that is not going to move. Yet still there will be outside influences such as weather, wind.

Then if the other is looking to define the accuracy and consistency of the shooter then one can look at the whole picture and then try to decipher why there is a nice 1/2MOA group with one shot nearly off the paper.

The latter is where I was at 4 years ago when I first started shooting rifles and reloading at the same time. I have since become better educated and experienced at calling those dropped shots and also understanding what I did to cause it.