1) I'm a huge sports fan but It should always be recognised that sports are just a very elaborate way of generating random numbers.
2) That manager ratings table is a prime example of "Excel disease" - the default precision in Excel is 2 d.p. and most people just blindly cut+paste that spurious precision without any thought as to its significance.
It really struck a chord - I am an engineer, in a big aerospace company. I work with many, many numerate, clever, highly educated engineers. All graduates, and many of them with PhDs. The presentation of data to unjustifiable levels of precision drives me mad. Computational simulation results are the worst, usually.
Oh, and if you are not careful, simulation results from numerical methods like CFD and FEA can be less deterministic than some people expect, introducing an element of randomness, in effect!
Thanks - I'm sure that's the case! (I'm involved with a project at the moment about trying to do uncertainty quantification for simulators - it feels hard but also really important)
To be fair, I suspect Klopp's biggest legacy may be in terms of refreshing the squad before it is handed over - there seems to be a good combination of experience and young prospects, so it should be a relatively easy task compared with getting handed the grenade at MUFC over the last decade or so
Thanks! I'm absolutely sure that there is a huge degree of luck in the refereeing process for example (and then sometimes that gets baked in by early career prizes for example)
Great post.
Two things:
1) I'm a huge sports fan but It should always be recognised that sports are just a very elaborate way of generating random numbers.
2) That manager ratings table is a prime example of "Excel disease" - the default precision in Excel is 2 d.p. and most people just blindly cut+paste that spurious precision without any thought as to its significance.
That's a really interesting point about Excel - I'd not thought of that before, but I'm sure you are right!
Great article, loved it!
It really struck a chord - I am an engineer, in a big aerospace company. I work with many, many numerate, clever, highly educated engineers. All graduates, and many of them with PhDs. The presentation of data to unjustifiable levels of precision drives me mad. Computational simulation results are the worst, usually.
Oh, and if you are not careful, simulation results from numerical methods like CFD and FEA can be less deterministic than some people expect, introducing an element of randomness, in effect!
Thanks - I'm sure that's the case! (I'm involved with a project at the moment about trying to do uncertainty quantification for simulators - it feels hard but also really important)
Very interesting insight! Thanks again! As a LFC fan I hope luck is with us too when Klopp is replaced.
To be fair, I suspect Klopp's biggest legacy may be in terms of refreshing the squad before it is handed over - there seems to be a good combination of experience and young prospects, so it should be a relatively easy task compared with getting handed the grenade at MUFC over the last decade or so
I’ve heard the first part of this (and taught it) lots over the years and it’s good to see it being brought to domains outside of the sciences.
The last part though- about luck and careers- is personally timely and well worth reiteration. Thanks for the great post.
Thanks! I'm absolutely sure that there is a huge degree of luck in the refereeing process for example (and then sometimes that gets baked in by early career prizes for example)
The Liverpool manager numbers are hilarious. I'd love to take bets from whoever produced them.
I'm sure there is a place for analytics (and to be fair Liverpool themselves are pretty good at it), but I'm not sure this is it!
"When numbers get serious they leave a mark on your door"... have I found a fellow Paul Simon fan :)?