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from the did-you-see-that-ludicrous-display-last-night dept.
Physics professor Tom Murphy goes through the statistics of World Cup scores, trying to understand whether the winner of a match is a statistically sound measure of which team is truly better. He theorizes:
"[...] soccer is an amalgam of random processes whose net effect produces rare events - those more-or-less unpredictable events spread more-or-less uniformly in time. Whether a good or bad bounce off the bar, a goal keeper who may or may not prevent a goal, a referee who may or may not see an illegal action, a pass that may or may not be intercepted, and on and on: the game is full of random, unpredictable events."
Using Poisson statistics, the post argues that the low-scores and uncorrelated events of many sports games are surprisingly weak reporters of true team ranking; i.e. the results amount to "flimsy numerology".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kebes on Monday June 23 2014, @02:16AM
I would argue your point about the measure of performance being "widely agreed upon by all participants (and by extension, spectators)". You imply that all parties involved understand what's going on. But I don't think that's true. Die-hard fans obsess over stats, and ascribe considerable importance to them. Regular fans and sports commentators also ascribe significance to sports outcomes (though less obsessively); they weave a narrative that explains the shifting the score, and the final outcome. That narrative usually doesn't acknowledge that random uncontrolled variables play a major role.
The point here is that the small-number statistics and closely-matched skills of competitors means that the outcomes are largely random. That the final 'winner' doesn't represent the "truly" (statistically-significantly) superior team. I agree that the "true rank" doesn't matter in the sense that the game has some arbitrary rules that are used to decide who ultimately wins. The game is fair in that sense. But the true nature of the outcome is, in fact, mostly not acknowledged by fans; and in fact isn't even fully appreciated by the players (who largely buy into superstition about 'hot streaks' and so forth).
Again, none of this is a world-altering revelation. And being aware of it doesn't undercut the inherent fun of watching sports. But it is, apparently, not obvious to the majority of sports enthusiasts.