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The Statistical Problem With Soccer

technologyreview.com

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Re: The Statistical Problem With Soccer

#11

Post by cromulent »

Soccer is a low scoring game. It's not a "statistical problem", it's a feature.

Treating it as "an experiment to determine which of the teams is the best" is not a good approach. There are a thousand contests in 90 minutes, but probably only two or three of them result in a goal, one of which may be from a penalty anyway.

High scoring games are much better at determining the best team on the day.

I believe that one of the major reasons for soccers massive worldwide spectator popularity is the low scoreline. You watch the game even if your team is obviously outclassed, as you can still win, and you can still win with just a few minutes left in most cases.

Re: The Statistical Problem With Soccer

#13

Post by philwelch »

jimbokun wrote: post #8

I think this is at the root of what really bugs (some) U.S. Americans about soccer, but they are unable to express it. Sports popular in the U.S. almost seem designed to allow for statistical analysis. Baseball is the ultimate game for a statistician, as you have data for every single pitch thrown and the outcome. American Football breaks the game down into series of discrete events (downs) each of which has a numeri…

Dumb luck plays an even bigger role in American football though. In American football a small amount of turnovers can dictate the result of the whole game. It is way more unpredictable than even soccer, which has some 90 minutes of uninterrupted play where each team continuously tries to either hold or gain possession and make an attack.

Plus, soccer has more statistics than you'd realize: proportion of possession, number of corner kicks, number of crosses, number of shots, percentage of shots on target, possession per area of the field, etc.

Re: The Statistical Problem With Soccer

#14

Post by ars »

The game would be pretty boring if the best team always won.

It's a game, it's meant for fun, it's not a science experiment.

By having it semi-random, you spread out then ups and downs.

Someone did an analysis of video games (posted on slashdot, but I can't find it), where they showed that the best video games don't have solid excitement all the way, but rather ups and downs.

The same it true here. If your team always won you would be bored pretty quickly.

Re: The Statistical Problem With Soccer

#15

Post by _3ex7 »

philwelch wrote: post #13
jimbokun wrote: post #8

I think this is at the root of what really bugs (some) U.S. Americans about soccer, but they are unable to express it. Sports popular in the U.S. almost seem designed to allow for statistical analysis. Baseball is the ultimate game for a statistician, as you have data for every single pitch thrown and the outcome. American Football breaks the game down into series of discrete events (downs) each of which has a numeri…

Dumb luck plays an even bigger role in American football though. In American football a small amount of turnovers can dictate the result of the whole game. It is way more unpredictable than even soccer, which has some 90 minutes of uninterrupted play where each team continuously tries to either hold or gain possession and make an attack. Plus, soccer has more statistics than you'd realize: proportion of possession, n…

When discussing a players career though, typically its goals, and appearences per club.

Re: The Statistical Problem With Soccer

#17

Post by mechanical_fish »

ars wrote: post #14

The game would be pretty boring if the best team always won. It's a game, it's meant for fun, it's not a science experiment. By having it semi-random, you spread out then ups and downs. Someone did an analysis of video games (posted on slashdot, but I can't find it), where they showed that the best video games don't have solid excitement all the way, but rather ups and downs. The same it true here. If your team alway…

The game would be pretty boring if the best team always won.

Indeed, as many sports folks have pointed out, one of the most popular annual sporting events in the USA is the NCAA college basketball tournament. A single-elimination event which is pretty much designed to improve the odds of having the "best" team get accidentally disqualified by an improbable fluke. The winner must win six consecutive games, while under enormous pressure, without making a mistake.

As it happens, the distribution of talent in college basketball still makes the seedings work fairly well. Just as World Cup soccer seedings work decently well, though it too becomes a single-elimination tournament after the first round. But these tournaments could obviously be much better designed if the objective was science.

Re: The Statistical Problem With Soccer

#18

Post by radu_floricica »

heyitsnick wrote: post #10

- "In fact, Skinner and Freeman have carried out an extensive statistical analysis of the scores at the last World Cup. They point out that if the outcomes of games were a true reflection of the teams' abilities, then the situation "Team A beats Team B beats Team C which beats Team A" should never occur. They call this an intransitive triplet." The outcome of the game is never meant to be a "true reflection" of the t…

When talking about a single game, yes. But in larger numbers of games you'd still expect to see a bigger difference between better teams and not so good teams, and the article argues the difference is not so big (17% intransitive tuples vs 25% in random pairs).

Re: The Statistical Problem With Soccer

#20

Post by chickamade »

chickamade wrote: post #6

It might be true the best team only has 28% chance of winning the World Cup. Though, we should know that it leaves only 72% chance for the rest of the 31 teams to win, and they are not uniform. So maybe 28% for the best team, 20% for the 2nd best, 12% for the 3rd best, etc., which sounds fair to me. There are 32 teams playing the World Cup, if one of them is a 1:3.5 dog, they have a pretty DAMN GOOD chance. The betti…

Actually I made a mistake, 28% would be 1:2.5 dog in betting lingo, and that's a HUGE when there are 31 other competitors.
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