Gingerbread Man on 18/6/2010 at 18:59
Pretty sure this isn't how Capello wanted his birthday to go... :grr:
(it's like Rooney has a big sign that says SHIT over him, and sometimes the word THE blinks into existence above it and sometimes it doesn't... How is he managing to be so awesome and so crap in the same half?)
Rug Burn Junky on 18/6/2010 at 19:22
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
There's a huge difference between being the better team and winning. cf Spain's humiliation the other day.
One of the reasons that the criticism that "there aren't enough goals scored" is valid is that because they are so rare, simple statistical variance will mean that the lesser team will come away with a victory far more often than is warranted. It divorces "skill at the game" just enough from "winner of the game" to render the validity of victory questionable.
All of the guffawing about "Ha American football scores too much" is also ignorant of the fact that there is a very real difference between "score" or "points" on the one hand and "goals scored" on the other. A score of 24-17 is actually about 3.5 "goals" to 2.5, which means that scoring is still rare enough to keep it exciting, but not so rare that bad teams win more than their fair share of the games.
Gingerbread Man on 18/6/2010 at 19:52
Yeah, that's very true. Even in baseball there are many instances of one scoring action being worth multiple points.
Vasquez on 18/6/2010 at 20:20
Awesome :cool:
N'Al on 18/6/2010 at 20:24
I should've just not bothered watching football today.
MorbusG on 18/6/2010 at 20:38
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
How is he managing to be so awesome and so crap in the same half?)
Injuries maybe; he might not be fully recovered yet. Pretty nice game from Algeria. First half especially.
Harvester on 18/6/2010 at 20:59
Quote Posted by SD
The bit where he's not exaggerating.
England
are much better than Algeria
Wasn't apparent at all from watching this match.
dj_ivocha on 18/6/2010 at 21:29
Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky
One of the reasons that the criticism that "there aren't enough goals scored" is valid is that because they are so rare, simple statistical variance will mean that the lesser team will come away with a victory far more often than is warranted. It divorces "skill at the game" just enough from "winner of the game" to render the validity of victory questionable.
On the other hand, the possibility of weaker teams winning more often than statistics says they should makes for more exciting games. The more predictable the outcome is, the less exciting is watching it. And in the end, for the weaker team to win, it must have done something right (or the losing team something wrong), so it's not all totally unfair.
Except for instances where wrong decisions by the referees can make a big impact *cough*USA's 3rd goal today*cough*
Brian The Dog on 18/6/2010 at 23:07
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
If I wanted to see a load of over-rated European players in identical stadiums, then I'd watch the Champions League group games.
Or watch England play :(
It's at times like this I'm glad I'm an England cricket fan, you get used to your team being occasionally pants, and usually mediocre.
Rug Burn Junky on 19/6/2010 at 03:14
Quote Posted by dj_ivocha
And in the end, for the weaker team to win, it must have done something right (or the losing team something wrong), so it's not all totally unfair.
That's not even true, as you just noted. I agree that things shouldn't be predictable, but at the highest level of sport, that's usually not a problem - on any given day even the weaker teams can actually outplay the stronger teams and be truly the better team that day.
But by making scoring so very rare, it magnifies fluke random chance (bad ref calls, unintentional bounces etc.) effect over talent and skill.
It's hard to really see this without understanding the mathematics. When teams' scoring averages (for and against) are too small with respect to the standard deviation, the fat parts of the bell curve overlap too much but each goal is probably greater than a single standard deviation (since they will be discrete integers instead of fractional numbers). So a lesser team doesn't have to play particularly better to get to the extreme high end of the curve. But because the mean is so close to 0, there is no real tail at the bottom end, so it under performs more often than it over performs (because it can't underperform to nearly as an extreme an extent).
To really get it, you have to see it as a monte carlo sim, but there
are legit mathematical underpinnings to explain the problem.
There are different ways to handle it. In American Football, the scoring balance ends up being increased about 50% with a smaller comparative variance, so the luck factor is still there, but reduced.
In baseball, the variance is probably even greater than soccer, but because they play soooooo many more games, it balances out, again, reducing the risk. Think of it this way - suppose you have a coin that flips heads 60% of the time. If you only flip it once, it's easy to hit that 40%, but if you do best of 7, the chance of tails winning is substantially reduced (fuck you, I've been drinking, so do the math your self.) So you know more definitively that the team that "wins" is actually the better one.
That said, there's something to be said for the tension that is introduced by the fact that you could get screwed at any moment. I get that, and as for myself, I appreciate it. But it comes at a price, and part of that price is the satisfaction that the "winner" is actually "better" is reduced.
Unfortunately, most people remain wilfully blind to this phenomenon, which is why there's always such shock and outrage at upsets that's really, kind of unwarranted. It's embarrassing to watch, really.
