I hate sports
A fair amount of attention is given to the college football situation in Los Angeles. Because I attended Craptastic State University (during football season, anyway), I don’t pay as much attention as some, but I’ve nevertheless become a strong USC hater and a mild UCLA fan. Some of my friends and coworkers attended USC, so I have to put up with their constant smugness during the fall. Some weeks are worse than others.
This is definitely one of those weeks. Perhaps the only thing in the college sports world I like less than USC is BYU. This is no coincidence–fans from both schools are among the most obnoxious, arrogant, and insufferable in the world. So what happens when my local team, UCLA loses 59-0 to BYU? I get the following statements from my colleagues:
“The combined loss margin in all of USC’s losses since Pete Carroll became coach is probably less than that!*,”
Followed by,
“You could make a strong argument that USC is statstically undefeated since Pete Carroll arrived.”
*Actually, I did a quick check, and this is NOT true. Actually, the combined point differential in all of USC’s losses since 2001 is…wait for it…wait for it…59.
*”Statistically undefeated?”
You guys ARE economists.
JB
No joke. More or less every debate in my office ultimately gets boiled down to a marginal cost/marginal benefit argument.
I should also clarify that what my coworker was arguing is that, essentially, all of USC’s losses are by so few points that the difference between those points and zero is statistically insignificant.
I think from a modeling perspective, you don’t want to look at the average point differential. I would propose that you do some sort of binomial MLE and then compute the probability of winning X games in a row, and see how that probability measures against zero.
Because all teams have fluff opponents, and the current incentive structure encourages lopsided victories, I think the point differential as a measure of statistical undefeatedness is a poor one.
I’ve got the data for you. Care to work some magic?
Go BYU!