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CricketingCyclist

Listed below are comments made by CricketingCyclist between Friday, 10th October 2008 and Friday, 10th October 2008.

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Lies, damned lies and statistics 1:36pm on 10 Oct 2008 Well, I have to say some rather strange assumptions have been made here.
Firstly, regarding strikers scoring more when in form: looking at whether they score in consecutive games tells you nothing. A successful scoring sequence is one that extends over a whole series of games. But even looking at series of games will only tell you that when a striker is scoring regularly he is finding the net with frequency and when he isn't, he isn't!
Secondly, penalties: I know of a Dutch study which clearly showed that the greatest chance of success was obtained when hitting the ball hard and low into the bottom corner. And let's face it, if large numbers of penalty takers started hitting the ball down the middle, goalkeepers would soon cotton on. The bottom corner penalty has the best chance WHETHER OR NOT the goalie dives.
As for the lone/collective goal celebration - surely this is a symptom and not a cause!

The problem is, that there is as much mythology attached to statistics as to anything else. They very often don't prove anything more than the preconceptions of those drawing the conclusions.

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