{"id":183191,"date":"2015-02-01T15:56:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T20:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/02\/01\/my-thoughts-on-this-years-super-bowl\/"},"modified":"2015-02-01T15:56:00","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T20:56:00","slug":"my-thoughts-on-this-years-super-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/02\/01\/my-thoughts-on-this-years-super-bowl\/","title":{"rendered":"My Thoughts on this Year&#8217;s Super Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 360px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"350\" height=\"197\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/feuNeJewzDo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/><i>Let me ask you, who are you gonna believe, Tom Brady, the greatest man in all of humanity, or a bunch of a**h**** on Twitter?<\/i><\/div>\n<p>First, I do not have a dog in this hunt, though Sharon<sup>*<\/sup> does, being a die hard Pats fan since before Tom Brady.<\/p>\n<p>I am watching for the ads.<\/p>\n<p>Remember that article by Warren Sharp in <i>Slate<\/i> that said that the Patriots fumble numbers were mathematically impossible?<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/datalab\/your-guide-to-deflate-gateballghazi-related-statistical-analyses\/\">not so much<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The data science community responded with a number of rebuttals (I put together a roundup of my favorite ones below). Collectively, these posts did a great job of breaking down the Statistics 101 problems with Sharp\u2019s original analyses. But even if Sharp had been less sloppy, it would have been right to take issue with the larger implication of his work \u2014 that any major outlier, if shown to be statistically significant, should be seen as evidence of rule-breaking.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Game-Shadows-Steroids-Scandal-Professional-ebook\/dp\/B000PC0S6O\/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=&amp;qid=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Barry Bonds<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cycle-Lies-Fall-Lance-Armstrong-ebook\/dp\/B00APGONZ2\/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=&amp;qid=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lance Armstrong<\/a> were outliers. But <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/lionel-messi-is-impossible\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">so is Lionel Messi<\/a>. And <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/datalab\/advice-for-phil-jackson-hire-phil-jackson\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Phil Jackson<\/a>. And the <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/stop-betting-against-gregg-popovich\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">San Antonio Spurs<\/a>.  It would be irresponsible \u2014 and depressing \u2014 to assume every incredible performance equals cheating. Celebrating outliers is one of the best parts about being a sports fan.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">I\u2019d <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/no-team-can-beat-the-draft\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">be<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/god-doesnt-hate-cleveland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">remiss<\/a> if I didn\u2019t note that, in cases such as these, our traditional methods of determining statistical significance can severely underestimate the odds of something happening due to chance. That\u2019s because of the so-called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ritholtz.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/the-wyatt-earp-effect\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wyatt Earp Effect<\/a>, named after the frontier lawman known for taking part in lots of gunfights without getting hurt. Earp\u2019s feat seems improbable in hindsight, but given the sheer number of shootouts in the Old West, it was actually pretty likely that <i>somebody<\/i> would make it out alive.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Likewise, it\u2019s difficult to estimate the true odds against a team preventing fumbles to the extent Sharp originally suggested New England did. Knowing particulars about the Patriots after the fact can bias us into computing the odds that a specific team would have a specific fumble record over a specific period of years. But the real question regarding New England\u2019s outlier-ness should surround the odds that <i>any<\/i> team would post <i>any<\/i> outlier statistic over <i>any<\/i> span of seasons. And the probability of that happening, as you may imagine, is a lot higher than the odds of a very specific set of circumstances.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Here were some of the responses to Sharp\u2019s posts:<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">The <a href=\"http:\/\/drewfustin.com\/2015\/01\/27\/patriots-fumble-comments\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">harshest counterargument<\/a> belonged to data scientist Drew Fustin. Fustin challenged Sharp\u2019s choice to exclude dome teams (Sharp\u2019s own post says outdoor teams barely fumble more often than those based in domes), instead looking at fumble rates across all teams in outdoor games only \u2014 <b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">whereupon the Patriots don\u2019t even rank first in the NFL at fumble avoidance over the 2010-2014 period<\/span><\/b>. He also questions whether Sharp\u2019s decision to use that 2010-14 period was a case of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseballthinkfactory.org\/primate_studies\/discussion\/mccracken_2001-03-20_0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cherry-picking<\/a> the timeframe that would make the Patriots look most like an extreme outlier. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>(<i>emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p>Seriously, it&#8217;s a tempest in a teapot, and distracting all of us from the true meaning of the Super Bowl:&nbsp; To sell us useless sh%$ that we really do not need and to pump up the profile of advertising firms. <\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">Love of my life, light of the cosmos, <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: bold;\">she who must be obeyed<\/span>, my wife.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me ask you, who are you gonna believe, Tom Brady, the greatest man in all of humanity, or a bunch of a**h**** on Twitter? First, I do not have a dog in this hunt, though Sharon* does, being a die hard Pats fan since before Tom Brady. I am watching for the ads. Remember &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1125,1002,1057,992],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-good-writing","category-sports","category-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}