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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: 2) by aristarchus on Monday June 23 2014, @03:48AM
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". A record of achievement means nothing when you have a pound of birdshot down your gullet. And of course, only a sucker bets on something that is not a sure thing. But maybe that is the point. If we could know who would win, what would be the point of the match, and more importantly, of betting on it? We need randomness, we want randomness, but only a randomness that bends towards us. As P.T. Barnum said, one born every minute. Suckers, that is. Don't bet. Play yourself! It's fun. No, I mean Soccer! Running nearly full tilt for 90 minutes? What could be more fun than that? And so, does it really matter who wins, anyway??
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday June 23 2014, @10:36PM
That's pretty much my feelings on the subject. If I'm not playing the game in question, I don't care. Although it is nice to win sometimes - it's a psychological reinforcement that you're doing it right.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"