(Data file: dome data) Until 2010, the Minnesota Twins professional baseball team played its games in the Metro dome, an indoor stadium with a fabric roof.10 In addition to the large air fans required...

(Data file: dome data) Until 2010, the Minnesota Twins professional baseball team played its games in the Metro dome, an indoor stadium with a fabric roof.10 In addition to the large air fans required to keep the roof from collapsing, the baseball field is surrounded by ventilation fans that blow heated or cooled air into the stadium. Air is normally blown into the center of the field equally from all directions. According to a retired supervisor in the Metro dome, in the late innings of some games, the fans would be modified so that the ventilation air would blow out from home plate toward the outfield. The idea is that the air flow might increase the length of a fly ball. For example, if this were done in the middle of the eighth inning, then the air-flow advantage would be in favor of the home team for six outs, three in each of the eighth and ninth innings, and in favor of the visitor for three outs in the ninth inning, resulting in a slight advantage for the home team. To see if manipulating the fans could possibly make any difference, a group of students at the University of Minnesota and their professor built a “cannon” that used compressed air to shoot baseballs. They then did the following experiment in the Metro dome in March 2003: