Greg Newton over at the blog NakedShorts points out that Bernard Madoff, in addition to earning suspiciously steady returns for investors, also got very, very consistent golf scores..

I had a round of emails with NPR's Mike Pesca, who thinks way faster than he can type. I'll leave the misspellings in:

 

(PESCA) I would say it is POSSIBLY to shoot that consistently — but for a 10 handicap golfer to never deviate — its smells very very fishy. Lets put it this way — over these 20 rounds he averages 84.65 — only 3 of the 20 rounds were more than 2 shots better or worse than that. Compare to a pro — chris dimarco for instance e- this guy has come in second in 3 majors he's not as consistent as Bernie Madoff

(KESTENBAUM) to be fair, couldn't a lot of dimarco's variation be due to the fact that those games are played on different courses? madoff's scores are all from fresh meadow country club.

(PESCA) Right, i just lkooked at cvertain 4 day scores on certain courses. Wider swings. I kjust need to calcuolate standard deviation. Can you do that?

Extra credit if anyone wants to crunch the numbers.