I spent most of Sunday working on the upcoming BP 2K10 annual, specifically writing player comments, and trying to keep in mind the marching orders given us by our editors, Steven and Christina: always try to answer the question “why.” For instance, anyone can say that Joe Shlabotnik is due for a collapse; at Baseball Prospectus, and at myriad other fine analytical sites, we tend to say that Joe Shlabotnik is due for a collapse because his .448 BABIP is unsustainable. It’s that second clause, the desire to understand and explain not just what happened but why it happened, that brought most of us to baseball analysis in the first place.
While I was writing yesterday, the Packers-Steelers game happened to be on in the background, and I was doing a good job of ignoring it until the following Joe Buck gem bled through: “We’re now going to show you a few stats which are good examples of why statistics can be so misleading, and why we don’t tend to put a lot of stock in them around here.” Or something very similar to that—my personal Tim McCarver filter generally extends to anyone who’s spent a lot of time sitting in close proximity to him, so Buck’s voice always sounds to me like it’s coming through ten feet of foam insulation, even when he’s covering football. Anyway, Buck went on to say something about how the Steelers are going to have a 4,000 yard quarterback, a 1,000 yard running back and two 1,000 yard receivers, yet were still under .500 going into yesterday’s game. That was his evidence as to how statistics are misleading and not of much value.
Wow. I mean, wow. Now, I haven’t followed the Steelers, or the NFL itself in fact, very closely this fall, but as soon as Buck had said his piece, I felt certain that the Steelers probably had either a bad defense (unlikely), had struggled in the red zone (untrue) or had a negative turnover ratio (bingo!). Turnover ratio is a statistic, isn’t it? So couldn’t statistics be successfully used to explain why the Steelers have struggled? “Statistics” themselves aren’t misleading—but certainly those who have no clue how to use them are. Calling statistics misleading and useless when you haven’t taken the time to actually use them to assemble a complete picture is like deriding a bow as a useless tool when you haven’t bothered to actually procure an arrow, knock it and fire it.
Sports fans deserve better than that, and that’s what we here at BP, and the fine analysts at places like Fangraphs and The Hardball Times, and columnists like Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski and a host of others, try to provide. You might say we try to speak Tuyuca, a language of the eastern Amazon, recently described in The Economist as the most difficult language on earth:
Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”. English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.
We’re lucky here at BP, because each time we present a theory, or propose an explanation, our readers question us, challenge us, and often inform us. They force us to think hard about why we’re saying what we’re saying, to try to write our pieces in Tuyuca, and for that we’re grateful. If only all sportswriters produced their work in Tuyuca, or all sports broadcasters were fluent in it.
"Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”. English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know."
Fascinating indeed. This is also true of Wintu, a Native American language in Northern California.
As to Richard's comment, my son and I (rabid Steelers fans) had immediate replies to that dumb statement - that with a 6-7 record going into the game, how about that all seven lossed were by 7 or fewer points, three were lost in the last 15 seconds of the game, and two more in overtime. And how about 13 games being a small sample.
Obviously, the won-loss record is below their 'true talent level', caused by things like turnovers and fourth quarter defensive meltdowns. It's a small sample of games, but unfortunately they are in the book. Like Ken says, you just have to look a little deeper to understand 'why?'
I would gladly pay for an option where I could choose to listen to the radio commentators of either team integrated into the TV broadcast, rather than Joe Buck, Cris Collinsworth, etc.
I watch NFL games on DVR because I can get through them in 40 minutes, which is both a blessing (score-commercial-extra point-commercial-kick-commercial) and necessary (3 young children). Yesterday I found myself rewinding several times due to a "Did he actually say what I thought he said?" reaction.
I tend to believe Joe Buck doesn't put a lot of stock into statistics because a deeper understanding of the game is HARD. Just watching and describing what you see is easy and it pays the mortgage(s).
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Great post. Ignorance about the use of statistics is pervasive and personally I think it has larger political consequences in the overall dumbing down of America.
If Americans understood that there is a bigger picture one can't ignore by saying "all these numbers are meaningless," we wouldn't have elected GWB twice and we'd realize that running two wars doesn't come from a special holiday-stomach budget where money is free and unlimited.
Pittsburgh's had an okay defense, according to sister site, Football Outsiders: 10th overall, 14th vs. pass, 9th vs. the run. On offense, they're 10th overall, being 9th passing and 16th rushing.
In special teams, they're 30th.
That's adjusted for quality of opponent, as they've had the second easiest schedule to date (but have the third hardest remaining).
"I would gladly pay for an option where I could choose to listen to the radio commentators of either team integrated into the TV broadcast, rather than Joe Buck, Cris Collinsworth, etc."
I also think it's interesting to consider the statement "statistics can be misleading". Statistics aren't capable of taking action. They aren't things which can mislead -- they are tools which can be USED (by analyst) to mislead. I find it somewhat entertaining that Buck proved his own ignorance. Only a poor craftsman blames his tools...
Those statistics didn't mislead anybody. The Steelers really do have those players. However, by listing them in that way, by failing to provide any context, and by then inferring a conclusion about team win/loss record based on this wholly insufficient information, Buck has encouraged his audience to misuse the stats. It seems that the vast majority of people knocking "stats" don't even realize that it's not about stats, it's about analysis. They don't even realize the disconnect.
I'm no Joe Buck fan, but to be fair, readers of Baseball Prospectus aren't really his audience. Buck's job is to take the action on the television screen and provide context to the laypeople watching on television. With baseball, it is a fairly cut and dried process -- viewers are usually able to see most of what is happening on the field on any given play. The invisible aspect are really the statistics, which, if used correctly, can paint a much richer portrait of the action on the field.
Football is actually much more complex because much of the action on the field is invisible to viewers -- often times, the camera can only focus on one or two elements of the game (generally following the actual football). However, dozens of things are going on during every single play -- blocking schemes, routes run by other receivers, individual match-ups, etc that are not picked up by the primary camera. A truly gifted announcer is good at both describing the main action in any play, and also (aided by the color commentator and support staff) to pick out the elements of the "game within the game" that aren't readily apparent to the viewer but paint a fuller picture of the action. Like in baseball, properly employed statistics can also be used to paint a richer picture of the action.
Thus, a truly gifted analyst can supplement that which is easily visible to viewers, readers, etc. with bits of information that are less visible to readers. Unfortunately, in football and other sports, fans, writers and commentators tend to focus on ONLY those statistics that are widely available -- such as those reported in the box scores of the local newspaper. Very few people choose to have have access to the advanced statistics that are available on sites like this, and because commentators are tasked with communicating with a lay audience, using advanced statistics that viewers don't understand (or waxing poetic about esoteric blocking schemes) risks turning the audience off.
Because many commentators are basing their analysis only on the limited information that is widely available, those statistics, do in fact, lie. Buck's problem is that he left the story half-told -- he should have said, "statistics can appear to lie," but then supplemented that comment additional information that complete the picture (as suggested in the article above).
If anything, Buck is being a bit condescending and failing in his job as an analyst by focusing on only the information is widely available rather than bringing anything new to the table. In this, he's joined by at least 90% of the sports commentators in America. It's not Buck specifically, its the broader culture of sports analysis that is to blame. I personally feel that announcers should give the audience the benefit of the doubt and not speak to the lowest common denominator, but that's not the way most of the media has chosen to do business.
I live overseas and am back for Christmas. The biggest thing I have noticed on my return is that knowledge and intellect is now considered a negative to most Americans. Whether it is a blonde on a Fox News talk show acting as if she doesn't know what the word "Tsar" means (but she actually graduated from Stanford with honors and went to Oxford), people entertained by game shows demonstrating that Americans don't know basic info that school children know, or a large percentage of the people being scared of numbers. It's a bit scary to encounter this attitude and mildly reminds me of the cultural revolution in China or Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia.
I don't very much agree with some of your broad generalizations, saigonsam. However, as someone who enjoys nothing more than the skewering of all hypocrisy, regardless of the political stripes it happens to be wearing, I have to admit that Jon Stewart's five-minute deconstruction of Gretchen Carlson was probably the funniest thing I've seen all year. --Just because you are on the couch with Jack Tripper and Janet doesn't mean you have to pretend to be Chrissy-- has become a catchphrase at my house.
I should have used the word "many" instead of "most". Perhaps just a gut reaction from going to the bookstore and seeing the NY Times' Book of Essential Knowledge on the bargain bin shelf while Beck and Palin's books were front and center.
NY Times products are bargain-basement because they have no credibility outside the liberal corridor; not because no one's interested in learning anything.
There has been a lot written on anti-intellectualism in the U.S. and how it's been a common thread since Europeans started settling here. I don't think it applies to most Americans, but a disconcertingly large number of people in this country equate intelligence with arrogance and elitism. How many people vote for the candidate with whom they'd like to have a beer?
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Thinking of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver announcing a baseball game depresses me.
It shouldn't. Having them announce baseball means there IS baseball, which is better than the next six weeks or so.
It also allows us to truly appreciate the GOOD broadcasters and sports-talk figures.