burmafrd;4769645 said:
but the OP has been very consistent
consistently wrong
people have to know the limitations of statistics, otherwise it is very easy to misinform the conversation
lets take an example, when you run 200 different statistics on all SB winners in the last 10 years, analyzing all different aspects, you will find that almost nothing is "always true" and several times things will come up that dont make sense in the context of what one is looking at
you can pretty much "happen to find" what you "want to find" if you start out with a conclusion, which is what most do
this is why, when using statistics, one has to create certain boundaries
what is my hypothesis?
how will i study this hypothesis?
what parameters will i use to study it?
are those parameters actually valid parameters?
what am i basing this on?
if i am making multiple evaluations and making assumptions, how am i going to correct for those assumptions?
these are just some of the things to be cognizant of
all these things have to be decided on BEFORE running the statistics
even then conclusions can be open to debate and have several limitations and can be interpreted several different ways
so when someone brings up a stat or even a few and tries to tell us what they think, it is usually laughable
i have stayed out of it in the past because many on this forum are allegedly "stat guys" and i am not interested in getting into a drawn out conversation about this issue
the problem is that "stat guys" usually get lost in the stats and have difficulty seeing the forest for the trees
just my .02
