Re: Athlon Sports on scoring efficiency

["Thomas Murphy" <tfmiii@worldnet.att.net>]

> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 21:38:13 -0400
> From: "Jim Meninno" <jam@london.com>
> Subject: Re: Athlon Sports on scoring efficiency
>
> <snip>
>
> Tom claims that the Athlon method of calculating the percentage of games
in
> which a player exceeds a given PTS/FGA ratio "minimizes the distorting
> effects of 'outliers' - those performances that are transcendentally good
or
> pathetically awful ."  Well, that's might be what it tries to do, but it
> could actually do the exact opposite.  For instance, a player who
> consistently averages just under the arbitrary cut off level ends up with
a
> rating of 0.000, even though he is extremely consistent.  A player who
> averages just over the completely made up, useless, silly, absurd cut off
> half the time and shoots 0-127 in the other 50% of his games, ends up with
a
> rating of 0.500, which I'm pretty sure is quite a bit higher than 0.000.
>
><snip>

I guess you don't understand the concept of a normal distribution or a bell
curve. Statistically we know that if we have enough instances of a player's
performance those instances when plotted should make a curve shaped like a
bell with most instances occurring near the average and fewer instances away
from the average eventually tapering off to nothing. So in your hypothetical
if a player averages just under the 'cut off' that means slightly over 50%
of that players instances will lie below the cut-off and 40+something
instances will lie above the cut-off. There is nothing 'arbitrary' about it.
If you can actually find an example like you describe you'll be able to
re-write the texts on statistics!

Best wishes, TomM