Eric,
What about tournament play?
During casual rounds, don't you think about course management?
While you may not like this type of approach, I think that as I build on this research, I will be able to identify/quantify what combinations of risks distinguish great holes.
and yes, this is how economists think about the world.
I certainly will not hold my breath as this "research" unfolds.
I have taken many courses in Economics, and what a joke they were. Trying to quantify everything with endless graphs and equations. Trying to make what is often irrational and random, rational and predictable. Amazing to me that there are people in education and in government who have never managed a business, never had to hire or fire or manage the complexities of a work force, having to deal with endless regs, a ridiculous tax system, and staying one step above the competition. And these are the people making the decisions for us and using our economy and real lives as a playground to test their silly and conflicting theories. The biggest joke is trying to make this all scientific. Just like you are trying to introduce science and equations to how golf decisions are made. It does not work anywhere but the glass menagerie of higher education. The truth of the matter is, that when it comes to economic forecasting, choosing alternatives , picking a portfolio , or whatever, studies have shown elementary school kids to outperform these so-called experts with the charts, graphs, and formulas.
This research study is certainly benign, have at it, whatever gives you pleasure in this short precious life is great. So , I wish you the best of luck with this and do applaud your apparent passion. That comment you made about this being how economists view the world, that is very scary, more scary than the scariest of horror movies. Like most studies in the social "Sciences" it tries to make the unquantifiable quantifiable. As someone that has managed hundreds of people over the years, and run small businesses, and worked as an employee for large employerss, just when all is running seemingly smooth, you get a curve ball thrown. The more you think you got it all figured out, the more you learn how little you do know. You have got to rely on instinct, and be flexible, and know which resources to call in, you don't have the luxury in the real world of ust falling back on a graph, equation, or economic model . We could certainly say the samething for golf, that is the attraction, the endless curve balls. The real economy is one curve ball after the next, and you survive based on how you cope with these curve balls, Graphs, equations, and economic models won't do a bit of good, except in some classroom or thesis paper. There are too many variables, too many unknowns, the assumptions are subject to endless debate, and most of all, human behavior can be irrational and unpredictable, humans beings and the economy do not work like economist's graphs and equations do, that is just a lot of smokescreen that gives the intellectual community a sense of superiority, and keeps a lot of people in the glass towers employed. And while the glass tower dwellers are drawing their next graph, or preparing their next economic model, the rest of us have to deal with the real world and in spite off all the stupidity and obstacles thrown at us, trying to make it work. We make it work not because of all the self absorbed, pseudo intellectual economic thinkers out there, we do it in spite of them.