Publishing Misfortunes: Recording Performance at the Inns of Court

This essay investigates the motivation behind the print publication of The Misfortunes of Arthur, privileging its functionality as a record of court performance rather than the political significance of its circulation. Examination of the playbook’s distinctive and extensive paratextual apparatus reveals the authors’ involvement with print publication. In considering the bibliographic presentation of the dumbshows, this essay finds overlooked parallels between Misfortunes and Stuart court masques and thus repositions the role which Misfortunes, and Inns drama more broadly, played in the developing relationship between early modern English print and performance.

COURT STATISTICS – A TOOL FOR MANAGEMENT AND STRATEGIC PLANNING

Court statistics developed over the time from bureaucratic data collection to monitoring and evaluation of court performances and judicial reforms. In the Europe, the Council of Europe CEPEJ contributed to the promotion of court statistics as a tool for management over judiciary and evaluation of judicial performances. Modern use of statistical reporting requires setting of performance indicators, which tracking will enable monitoring of court performance and inform decision making on further actions. Some of performance indicators are recommended by the CEPEJ and are widely accepted, like clearance rate and disposition time. However, court statistics could include information beyond court cases, like financial data per court and human resource data, which could inform interventions in the area of human resource management and financial resource management, i.e. equalization of workload among courts and judges, as well as calculation of cost per case. The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the courts and court statistics contributed significantly to improvement of administration of justice, through development of automatized case management systems, automatic export of relevant reports on court performance based on predefined indicators. However, few preconditions are required for successful deployment of the ICT in judiciary. Countries were putting efforts to strengthen court statistics and some good practices were developed over time. Slovenia dashboard for improvement of disposition time and Serbian court maps for tracking backlog reduction are good examples that could be used replicated in countries with similar challenges and goals.

Visual Fixation in NBA Free-Throws and the Relationship to On-Court Performance

Purpose Although hitting a baseball is often described as the most difficult task in all of sports, shooting baskets during a game likely ranks a close second. Previous studies have described the role of vision in basketball and more specifically a concept termed the “quiet eye” has been shown to be related to basketball performance. How a shooter visualizes the target, how consistent their visual fixation is, and how long they maintain that fixation has been correlated to shooting success. Although the majority of previous reports have included non-professional basketball shooters, we evaluated NBA (National Basketball Association) players to determine if this skill was significant at the professional level. Materials and Methods We evaluated 16 professional NBA players prior to the 2018-2019 NBA season. All players shot 30 consecutive free-throws while wearing Tobii Pro eye-tracking glasses. Following the completion of the task, several metrics were calculated including shooting success rate, as well as four measures of the position and duration of ocular fixation just prior to, during, and immediately after ball release for each shot of each player. Additionally, player performance statistics from the 2018-2019 season were recorded and compared to the visual fixation data. Descriptive statistics as well as correlations between the visual fixation metrics and on-court performance metrics were calculated. Results NBA shooters averaged a 79% success rate in free throw shooting (SD = 14%, min = 56%, max=100%) during the study. Moderate statistically significant correlations were found between the percentage of successful free throws and the four measures of visual fixation (r=0.539 to 0.687). In addition, visual fixation measures were found to be corelated with on-court metrics suggesting that shooters who had more frequent, as well as longer, fixations on the rim where more likely to have lower USG%, and ORB% as well as higher FG3%. The percentage of successful shots in the study was compared to the on-court FT% and found to be moderately correlated (r=0.536). Conclusions The need to maintain ocular fixation on the rim as one shoots seems elementary, but in fact varies greatly among NBA players, as noted in these results. Our data suggests that players who visually fixate longer and more frequently on the rim are more likely to be successful in free throws, as well as more successful in 3-point goals. Likely due to their likely distance from the basket, they do not make as many offensive rebounds. This data set appears to describe basketball guards in contrast to forwards/centers and supports previous research on non-professional basketball players.