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Its a physics paper and not a news paper article.

I do assume that the notion is used and also implies the 'resolution'/'precision' of that number.

why do people numbers need resolution, emphasis but dollar amounts does not?
One has a source, the other is a figure of speech without a source.
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That’s not what this paper says.
> It has been shown that the optimal location for the ball to hit the headpin is 6 cm offset from the center, and the optimal entry angle for the ball to be incident to the pin at is 6°

The ideal isn't straight on.

I thought this was common knowledge, that's always been the spot I've aimed for (~5-6cm to the right of the headpin) since the 80s.
Question: the authors use the term "inhomogeneous" to describe the oil pattern. Is there a difference between heterogeneous and inhomogeneous?
subtle difference: "heterogeneous" generally implies a mixture of distinct, separate elements or components, while "inhomogeneous" can refer to a lack of uniformity in properties within a single substance

at least in chem

Heterogeneous refers to a mix of dissimilar compounds, while inhomogeneous is more about a varying of properties throughout a single compound.

So in the abstract, the friction surface is called inhomogeneous because it's referring to the floor as one component with a varying friction coefficient.

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This reminds me of previous work showing where you should aim in darts (https://www.stat.cmu.edu/~ryantibs/darts/). Basically, if you're very accurate you should aim at the 20, but next to it are 1 and 5, so if you're less accurate there are more forgiving spots on the board.