Quote:
Originally Posted by cdcox
The limiting sample size is 16 games per season. A team's record in a given year is a random variable that is some function of the underlying True Strength of the team. People that don't think statistically tend to equate the team record and the True Strength.
Think of it this way: if Tiger Woods hit two golf balls twice in a row under exactly the same conditions, they might land somewhat close to one another but not exactly in the same exact spot. There is some randomness that factors into his golf swing. In an NFL game there are probably millions of these golf-ball sized random variations. So if the Chiefs were able to replay all of their games this season, they would not finish 9-0 every time. There are enough random variations in any given game to allow the outcome to change if it were to be "replayed". If we would represent the Chiefs on the graph they would be 9-0. However if we replayed their season 100 times I suspect that on average we would be about 7-2. This is my guess of our True Strength. So if the season were now over, and we were to play another 9 game season in a year we would not necessarily expect the Chiefs to win 9 games again even if the rosters all remained in tact and the schedules were exactly the same. We'd expect some random variation. If next year the Chiefs went 5-4 with the same exact conditions, it wouldn't be that surprising. To a large degree we just don't know how good the Chiefs really are.
On the other hand if the Chiefs and played 160 games so far this season and had won 155 of them, we would know the Chiefs are really, really good. We would be shocked if a year from now they kept the same roster, every other team kept the same roster and we played the same schedule and went 90-70. Over a 160 game season the record will be a much better indicator of a team's True Strength than a 16 game season.
That is why the variance of MLB will have a smaller variance than the NFL, and why sample size matters.
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look, I appreciate the stats work you do here and within your site, but I think the major contributor to football's wide performance gap compared with other sports from season to season is caused primarily by injury and secondarily by team chemistry. Imo that is also what separates football from other sports. certainly, other sports rely heavily on team chemistry, but I don't think it is quite as dynamic as it is within a football team and locker room.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaFace
And that's why you're not a statistician.
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I don't claim to be one, and I, nor anyone else in this thread disputed the statistical data of the OP.
you are wrong to call the gist of this info "statistics". cross referencing this data is an abstract comparison, not statistics. some folks get confused comparing apples with oranges. they forget apples are apples and oranges are oranges. they forget the fact this kind of comparison is only that -- comparison, complete with a set of opinions that are loosely based in fact, but are not statistics
