November 10, 2003
Sometimes You Just Get It Wrong
For some time now, there's been a post of mine that I've been meaning to update. One, where to be charitable, I was pretty spectacularly wrong, or at least needlessly dismissive, of some pretty impressive statistical analysis applied to professional football. I'm talking about a post I titled, "Now Calling The Plays, Alan Greenspan," and I meant to get around to amending my thoughts, but Jim Henley beat me to it, calling my argument concerning a serious study on how often coaches should go for it on fourth down, "weak".
In retrospect, you'll have no argument from me there. But to be fair, since I made that post 14 months ago, I've undergone a pretty dramatic conversion of sorts on the subject by way of my reading of Michael Lewis' book about Billy Beane and how he runs the Oakland A's, Moneyball. For a number of years, the use of statistical analysis in the sports world was something that was only on periphery of my awareness -- and at times, I was just as casually dismissive of those findings as many of those folks who had a vested interest in shooting them down.
Since reading Lewis' book, however, I've been preaching the gospel of Sabermetrics with the zeal of the newly converted -- and that includes a willingness to take a hard look at any sort of numbers that might shed some light on how things work on the playing field.
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01:11 AM