ESPN at war with Pats?

[PatriotReign37]

Think of all the money that has been wagered since 2007 on all of the Patrtiots' games. Nevada Sen. Dean Heller has said that NFL cheating could be a problem for his state. Something like deflated footballs could very well have changed the over/under in all those games. With this in mind, the NFL has zero interest in an outcome other than one the exonerates the Patriots. Otherwise, they are opening up a whole new can of worms and themselves to lawsuits.

What we are seeing now with this "investigation" is the NFL stalling for time to come up with an excuse that the general public will accept in order to "protect the shield". The 'time' being taken to run a 'thorough' investigation is and always has been time needed to let the story cool off and create a summary to the events that would not make the Patriots look like they did anything wrong.

 

Yeah, like boxing

 

If you cant trust Vegas who can you trust?

[patman]

Think of all the money that has been wagered since 2007 on all of the Patrtiots' games. Nevada Sen. Dean Heller has said that NFL cheating could be a problem for his state. Something like deflated footballs could very well have changed the over/under in all those games. With this in mind, the NFL has zero interest in an outcome other than one the exonerates the Patriots. Otherwise, they are opening up a whole new can of worms and themselves to lawsuits.

What we are seeing now with this "investigation" is the NFL stalling for time to come up with an excuse that the general public will accept in order to "protect the shield". The 'time' being taken to run a 'thorough' investigation is and always has been time needed to let the story cool off and create a summary to the events that would not make the Patriots look like they did anything wrong.

The excuse was given by BB and would have taken 2 days in high school lab to verify. Patriot fans were/are upset that the league dragged their asses on it.  

[Strongman]

Please explain this, this is hilarious. How would betters know  that balls are under inflated or if any other cheating such as cap cheating, piping in noise, texting in plays when you monitoring a TV.  The line would not change. Bettors bet on projections based on what results happened.  If the pats or any team was getting a slight/large/huge advantage from cheating in the past that would already be reflected in the line. 

 

And tell me how the league opens them selves to lawsuits? The NFL does not even allow game gambling in any state that has a team. So in other words they discourage gambling. Now they certainly benefit by the added interest it generates but they don;t even allow the talk shows on the nFL channel to talks spreads. Do you think Columbia is going to allow any smirch on their reputation?

 

If they wanted to protect the shield why did someone in the league office leak that to Mort, Why did someone tell Kravitz. Do you think it would look ten times worse if they covered anything up. Why do you think they are having such a prestigious school as Columbia perform the test.

Nothing you said prevents a class action lawsuit by people who lost money on Cheatriots' games.

[patman]

Nothing you said prevents a class action lawsuit by people who lost money on Cheatriots' games.

No, everything I said does. Tell me how?  Did the pats lead you to believe that they would win or lose and deliberately do the opposite and encourage you to bet?  How do you know it affected the outcome? What are you going to point to the pats only leading by 7 points and scoring only 14 points with an under-inflated ball and then scoring 28 with the ball inflated to the correct 12.5. How does that play into the argument?  and for everyone that loses a bet going one way the guy who went the other way won. And how can they say the balls during that game was under inflated?  Yeah, I am sure the lawyers that sued Enron, Monsanto, Union carbide and the breast Implants are just lining up. 

[PatsFanTX]

Nothing you said prevents a class action lawsuit by people who lost money on Cheatriots' games.

A class action lawsuit?

Seriously?

[drdetroit]

Lol this is like when you see 2 lifelong friends have a falling out over one thing and they become mortal enemies. ESPN breaks one negative story about the pats and it's WW3 between the .

Love it

[afosomf]

A class action lawsuit?

Seriously?

Ya the colts secretly deflated all 12 patcheats balls to frame them...pat fans are real bright

[drdetroit]

Nothing you said prevents a class action lawsuit by people who lost money on Cheatriots' games.

Gambling is illegal in federal and most state and local jurisdictions. Can't sue for damages caused to a criminal transaction. Fuggedabouit

Looks like u n tx went to the same law school

[PatsFanTX]

Ya the colts secretly deflated all 12 patcheats balls to frame them...pat fans are real bright

They did, read the article.

The Pats were set up.

[patman]

Ya the colts secretly deflated all 12 patcheats balls to frame them...pat fans are real bright

First you know the argument that Esisason is making is that the colts did not deflate any balls,  stay on topic. The colts had one ball and that one ball is the only one that measured 2lbs under.  Why was that?

[EM31]

Colts deflated ball after Jackson’s pick

Deflategate may now have more conspiracy theories than the Kennedy assassination. Here’s the latest: It was the Colts, not the Patriots, who deflated a football in the AFC Championship Game.

Several reports have indicated that the Colts first noticed that the Patriots were deflating footballs when linebacker D’Qwell Jackson intercepted a Tom Brady pass and the ball felt flat. The new conspiracy theory is that after Jackson’s interception, the Colts took some air out of that football on their own sideline before handing it over to the officials to have it tested.

It’s not completely clear where this conspiracy theory started, but it was floated today on Boston radio station WEEI, when Adam Schefter of ESPN was a guest. After the host proposed to Schefter that “The Colts deflated the one ball that D’Qwell Jackson intercepted, and all the other balls were just a tick under,” Schefter said that’s a theory he’s heard.

“I do think there are people who believe that,” Schefter said. “I know there are people who believe that. . . . I’ll just say, I’m not even going to specify, there are people who believe that, OK? There are people who believe that. And I think there are people who have heard that theory and who say, ‘That’s impossible.'”

It’s still unclear how many of the Patriots’ 12 offensive footballs were found to be deflated, and by how much. There have been reports that 11 of the 12 balls were significantly under-inflated, and if those reports are correct, then the theory that the Colts deflated a ball wouldn’t explain why 10 other balls were under-inflated. But there have also been reports that only one ball was significantly under-inflated, and that other balls were either within the correct inflation range or only barely under-inflated. If those reports are true — and if the one ball that was significantly under-inflated was the one that the Colts handed over to the officials after Jackson’s interception — that could lend some credence to the new conspiracy theory. And, of course, if that’s found to be true, then the Colts would find themselves in hot water with the league.

Could it turn out that it’s the Colts, not the Patriots, who get busted for Deflategate? It sounds crazy. But at this point we can’t rule anything out.

 

So the theory was first floated on a Boston radio station.

 

Shocker.

[Strongman]

Gambling is illegal in federal and most state and local jurisdictions. Can't sue for damages caused to a criminal transaction. Fuggedabouit

Looks like u n tx went to the same law school

Last time I checked, sports betting is allowed in Nevada and other states.

[PatsFanTX]

So the theory was first floated on a Boston radio station.

 

Shocker.

Adam Schefter works for ESPN, not WEEI.

[EM31]

How the balls became deflated in one game and the arguments surrounding by how much were they were deflated, who had possession of the balls and for how long..... IS ALL JUST A GIANT SMOKESCREEN

 

The real smoking gun, the one that Patriots fans do not want people to be talking about is the unnatural change in the Patriots rate of fumbling since the rules change after the 2006 season.  Those numbers are incontrovertible and they clearly show that whatever has been going on has been going on for EIGHT YEARS.

 

None of this is about whether or not the Pats would have mopped the floor with the Colts anyway.  It isn't even about whether or not the Pats, a very good team by any measure could have beaten the Seattle Seahawks in the biggest game of the Year without the need for cheating because they did.

 

No, the question here is what would the Patriots do once they discovered a small way within the rules to give their team a fumbling edge over opponents?   What would the Pats do at that point?   Would the brains trust be ethically strong enough to resist temptation to turn a small edge within the rules into a huge edge outside of the rules?  The temptation here is turning that small edge within the rules (12.5 PSI) into a much bigger edge if only they did not mind going outside if the ball pressure regulations.  To me the statistics over the last eight years give us the answer to that question pretty much unequivocally. 

 

To paraphrase Jack Nicholson from the movie the Departed, Scumbags ain't gonna just stop having scum inside of them.

 

Bill Belichick and whoever else was in on the scam simply could not resist moving the fumble numbers in their favor even if it meant stepping over a line.  We do not need photographic evidence of someone actually taking the air out of the balls.  We already have 8 years worth of statistical evidence in the books which indicate that it has been done.

 

<edited to add>

It is also not about how Eli Manning likes to have his balls roughed up or

That Aaron Rogers likes to throw a 13.5 PSI football.

 

It is not about the ambient temperature change between the times the balls were measured although the temperature of the game against the Colts would not explain the PSI change even in this extremely dubious theory because it simply was not that cold in the AFCCG.

 

All of those are bullsh1t deflections to stop people talking about the real issue which is doctoring the footballs to significantly move the fumble number in favor of your team for eight years.  Eight years of artificially winning the turnover battle!!! That is the real issue. 

[EM31]

Adam Schefter works for ESPN, not WEEI.

 

And he is not the source of this theory.

[GuidoYastrzemski]

Last time I checked, sports betting is allowed in Nevada and other states.

 

Only Nevada. (and maybe Atlantic City now also?)

[GuidoYastrzemski]

How the balls became deflated in one game and the arguments surrounding by how much were they were deflated, who had possession of the balls and for how long..... IS ALL JUST A GIANT SMOKESCREEN

 

The real smoking gun, the one that Patriots fans do not want people to be talking about is the unnatural change in the Patriots rate of fumbling since the rules change after the 2006 season.  Those numbers are incontrovertible and they clearly show that whatever has been going on has been going on for EIGHT YEARS.

 

None of this is about whether or not the Pats would have mopped the floor with the Colts anyway.  It isn't even about whether or not the Pats, a very good team by any measure could have beaten the Seattle Seahawks in the biggest game of the Year without the need for cheating because clearly they did so last weekend.

 

No, the question here is whether or not the Patriots  having discovered a small way within the rules to give their team a fumbling edge over opponents, would the brains trust be ethically strong enough to resist temptation?  The temptation here is turning that small edge within the rules (12.5 PSI) into a much bigger edge if only they did not mind skirting a few rules.  To me the statistics over the last eight years give us the answer to that question unequivocally.

 

Bill Belichick and whoever else was in on the scam just could not resist moving the fumble numbers in their favor even if it meant stepping over a line.  We do not need photographic evidence of someone actually taking the air out of the balls.  We already have 8 years worth of statistical evidence in the books which indicate that it has been done.

 

<edited to add>

It is also not about how Eli Manning likes to have his balls roughed up or

That Aaron Rogers likes to throw a 13.5 PSI football.

 

It is not about the ambient temperature change between the times the balls were measured although the temperature of the game against the Colts would not explain the PSI change even in this extremely dubious theory because it simply was not that cold in the AFCCG.

 

All of those are bullsh1t deflections to stop people talking about the real issue which is doctoring the footballs to significantly move the fumble number in favor of your team for eight years.  Eight years of artificially winning the turnover battle!!! That is the real issue. 

 

 

Just more conjecture vomited up and called "facts"

[AFCEastFan]

The real smoking gun, the one that Patriots fans do not want people to be talking about is the unnatural change in the Patriots rate of fumbling since the rules change after the 2006 season.  Those numbers are incontrovertible and they clearly show that whatever has been going on has been going on for EIGHT YEARS.

 

 

You can talk about that all you want.  Find an honest statistical study that does not cherry pick data to provide maximum evidence for an anti-Patriots conspiracy theory, put aside your pre-existing biases like "smoking gun" and "unnatural", and be open minded to the principle that correlation is not causation and most Patriots fans (at least the ones that I know) are happy to discuss it. 

[GuidoYastrzemski]

You can talk about that all you want.  Find an honest statistical study that does not cherry pick data to provide maximum evidence for an anti-Patriots conspiracy theory, put aside your pre-existing biases like "smoking gun" and "unnatural", and be open minded to the principle that correlation is not causation and most Patriots fans (at least the ones that I know) are happy to discuss it. 

 

Ya. what HE said!

[PatsFanTX]

How the balls became deflated in one game and the arguments surrounding by how much were they were deflated, who had possession of the balls and for how long..... IS ALL JUST A GIANT SMOKESCREEN

 

The real smoking gun, the one that Patriots fans do not want people to be talking about is the unnatural change in the Patriots rate of fumbling since the rules change after the 2006 season.  Those numbers are incontrovertible and they clearly show that whatever has been going on has been going on for EIGHT YEARS.

 

None of this is about whether or not the Pats would have mopped the floor with the Colts anyway.  It isn't even about whether or not the Pats, a very good team by any measure could have beaten the Seattle Seahawks in the biggest game of the Year without the need for cheating because they did.

 

No, the question here is what would the Patriots do once they discovered a small way within the rules to give their team a fumbling edge over opponents?   What would the Pats do at that point?   Would the brains trust be ethically strong enough to resist temptation to turn a small edge within the rules into a huge edge outside of the rules?  The temptation here is turning that small edge within the rules (12.5 PSI) into a much bigger edge if only they did not mind going outside if the ball pressure regulations.  To me the statistics over the last eight years give us the answer to that question pretty much unequivocally. 

 

To paraphrase Jack Nicholson from the movie the Departed, Scumbags ain't gonna just stop having scum inside of them.

 

Bill Belichick and whoever else was in on the scam simply could not resist moving the fumble numbers in their favor even if it meant stepping over a line.  We do not need photographic evidence of someone actually taking the air out of the balls.  We already have 8 years worth of statistical evidence in the books which indicate that it has been done.

 

<edited to add>

It is also not about how Eli Manning likes to have his balls roughed up or

That Aaron Rogers likes to throw a 13.5 PSI football.

 

It is not about the ambient temperature change between the times the balls were measured although the temperature of the game against the Colts would not explain the PSI change even in this extremely dubious theory because it simply was not that cold in the AFCCG.

 

All of those are bullsh1t deflections to stop people talking about the real issue which is doctoring the footballs to significantly move the fumble number in favor of your team for eight years.  Eight years of artificially winning the turnover battle!!! That is the real issue.

Maybe the Pats RB's used Jerry Rice's stickum.

[EM31]

You can talk about that all you want.  Find an honest statistical study that does not cherry pick data to provide maximum evidence for an anti-Patriots conspiracy theory, put aside your pre-existing biases like "smoking gun" and "unnatural", and be open minded to the principle that correlation is not causation and most Patriots fans (at least the ones that I know) are happy to discuss it. 

 

Since you mention it.  Heck even the Professor who is a Pats fan has numbers which are a smoking gun.

 

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/deflate-gate-triggers-stat-spat-as-analysts-attempt-to-solve-why-patriots-don-t-fumble-003107565-nfl.html

 

No, it is not simple a single statistician.

...

Another leader in the statistic community, Brian Burke of Advanced Football Analytics, drew this conclusion in a recent post after looking at fumble rates (excluding dome teams):

 

“Whoa. In this case NE is at the top of the list, and the next best team is a distant second. Notice how the second team [baltimore] through the second to last team [Philadelphia] have rates that are within 1 or 2 plays of each other. NE, however, is better than the next best team by 20 plays per fumble.”

That’s hard to explain away.

 

Sharp doesn’t claim any team as his favorite. His affinity is for the numbers, whether for his handicapping site or for his algorithms. He said he would like other people to crunch the numbers even if it shows where he went wrong.

 

“Can you deny that the Patriots did not change dramatically in fumble rate since the 2006 season?” he asked. “Can you deny that the Pats are significantly better than the rest of the NFL since then?”

 

If no one can deny those two assertions, the question that raises looms as large as deflate-gate, if not larger. Winning the turnover battle is an enormous part of winning football games, and if the Patriots found a way to win the turnover battle, whether by deflating the ball or some other measure (or both), that indicates a turning point in the sport starting in 2006.

 

[EM31]

Maybe the Pats RB's used Jerry Rice's stickum.

 

Doubtful since their cheating seems to generally more sophisticated.

[EM31]

Plus you know you guys really need to change the formula here where anyone who says anything against your team cannot be telling the truth.  They have to be sore losers or in it for the money or fans of a rival team or jealous of the successes achieved by the Patriots or some other bizarre reason.

 

It reminds me of the "nuts and sluts" defense that the Bill Clinton spin machine managed to use successfully for so many years against his former girlfriends.  Or the Lance Armstrong defense where they blamed negative stories on the jealousy of lesser cyclists.  It reminds me of the Madoff responses in the early years to his lack of transparency or the Bill Cosby responses to stories coming out about him.  The problem is that in ALL of those cases, Clinton, Armstrong, Madoff and Cosby, THEY were the ones who were lying through their teeth all along and the people trying to smear the messengers were the ones who were covering up the truth.

 

Just like the Patriots and Patriots fans are doing here.

 

There is a stench of something rotting up in New England and the only people who do not see anything wrong are the ones who live amid that stench every day.

[EM31]

Just more conjecture vomited up and called "facts"

 

Turnover records and the changes that happened eight years ago are facts.

 

No matter how much you wish that they are not.

[AFCEastFan]

Since you mention it.  Heck even the Professor who is a Pats fan has numbers which are a smoking gun.

 

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/deflate-gate-triggers-stat-spat-as-analysts-attempt-to-solve-why-patriots-don-t-fumble-003107565-nfl.html

 

No, it is not simple a single statistician.

 

 

 

 

This article best sums up my views on the topic:

 

https://hbr.org/2015/01/an-important-data-lesson-from-an-inconsequential-football-scandal

 

An Important Data Lesson from an Inconsequential Football Scandal

 

As “Deflategate” rattles the National Football League in the run-up to this year’s Super Bowl, data analysts have swooped in, including Warren Sharp, one of many self-styled football analysts who blog about the topic. In a Slate article he analyzes the fumbling rate of the New England Patriots — the team accused of purposefully underinflating footballs to gain an advantage. The headline to his analysis calls the Patriots’ fumble rate compared to the rest of the league “nearly impossible.”

Sharp, you might think, found the smoking gun — a statistic that proves that the Patriots cheated. Only a patient reader who persists to the last paragraph will see that Sharp ultimately admits that New England’s spectacular performance on the metric could be explained in any number of ways, including legitimate ones like perfecting ball security techniques or practicing prevention.

In short, the data say the Patriots are excellent at preventing fumbles. It says nothing about why.

This distinction represents one of big data analysis’ most under-appreciated problems: talking about reverse causation. In reverse causation problems, we know the result and we work backwards to understand the causes.

Reverse causation investigations have the opposite structure from A/B tests, in which we vary known causes, and observe how the variations affect an outcome. If the number of visitors to your website jumped after you changed the image on your Facebook page, you conclude that the new photo is the reason for the traffic surge. (Note: Good A/B test construction can help you see most likely causes; bad A/B test construction creates its own set of problems.).

By contrast, the biggest obstacle to solving reverse causation is the infinite number of possible causes that might influence the known outcome. This is compounded by the fact that we want to assign a cause. So when some data is plucked out of a large set that fits a narrative we may have already constructed, it’s very tempting to simply assign causation when it doesn’t exist.

Most of the time, though, the data offer hints, but no proof. Sharp’s article on the Patriots is one such case. When reading this style of data journalism, pay attention to the structure of the statistical argument. Here is how I summarize Sharp’s:

    New England is an outlier in the plays-per-fumbles-lost metric, performing far better than any other team (1.8x above the NFL team average).

    Different ways of visualizing and re-formulating the metric yield the same conclusion that New England is the outlier.

    There is a “dome effect.” Teams whose home stadiums are indoors typically suffer 10 fewer fumbles than the outdoors teams. New England is a non-dome team that surpasses most dome teams on plays-per-total-fumbles. If dome teams are removed from the analysis, New England is a statistical outlier.

    Assuming that the distribution of the metric by team is a bell curve, the chance that New England could have achieved such an extraordinary level of play per fumbles lost is extremely remote.

    Therefore, it is “nearly impossible” for any team to possess such an ability to prevent fumbles … unless the team is cheating.

Points 1 to 4 are essentially slightly different reiterations of the known outcome. It is point five in which a connection is established between that outcome and its cause(s). But the causal link is tenuous at best. However suggestive, the data does not prove intent or guilt. It simply describes a statistical phenomenon.

Indeed, digging in on the Patriots data shows that they may not be much of an outlier. In the “dome” analysis, Sharp switched from looking at fumbles lost to total fumbles (which includes recovered fumbles). Other football data analysts have concluded (more than halfway down the page) that fumble recovery is mostly random, so plays per total fumbles is the more useful metric.

Given this new measure, the Patriots are not an outlier, as they’re second to the Atlanta Falcons in fumble performance. Only when Sharp removed all dome teams (the Falcons being one) could he argue that the Patriots were an outlier.

Sharp showed that it is almost impossible for an average team to attain such a low fumble rate, but we have no data that proves the Patriots or any particular team couldn’t achieve it in a legal way. And in fact, the dome analysis suggests there are legitimate methods to perform equally or slightly better than the Patriots did — just look at the Falcons. Unless you want to allege the Falcons also tampered with footballs. (Others have also since refuted this fumbles-prove-malicious-behavior narrative and corrected what seems to be a major flaw in Sharp’s approach: eliminating dome teams from analysis, intead of dome games. When that change is made, the Patriots seem to perform well, but not strangely well; not even the best).

To his credit, Sharp did not argue point five. Nevertheless, many readers and incurious reporters made this causal leap. Sharp helped them along by using a loaded phrase “nearly impossible” to sell the story.

And that’s the reverse causation problem we face. Big data is exposing all kinds of outliers and trends we hadn’t seen before and we’re assigning causes somewhat recklessly, because it makes a good story, or helps confirm our biases. You see this all the time in your Twitter stream: “7 Charts that Explain This.” Or “The One Chart that Tells You Why Something Is Happening.” We’re getting better and better at analyzing and visualizing big data to spot coincidences, outliers and trends. It’s getting easier and easier to convince ourselves of specific narratives without any real data to support them.

Most good statistical analysis will be narratively unsatisfying, loaded down with “we don’t know,” “it depends,” and “the data can’t prove that.”

You can see how this can become a big problem for companies wanting to exploit the big data they’re amassing. If you think about most practical data problems, they often concern reverse causation. The sales of a particular product suddenly plunged; what caused it? The number of measles cases spiked up in a neighborhood; how did it happen? People with a certain brand of phone tend to shop at certain stores; why is that? In cases like these, we know the outcome, and we often don’t know the cause.

The possibility of any number of causes tempts us to retrofit a narrative but we must resist it. The astute analyst is one who figures out how to bring a manageable structure to this work. See this post by statistician Andrew Gelman for further thoughts.

In the mean time, maintain a healthy skepticism the next time someone suggests they’ve found causation in the reverse. Their claims may be overblown.

Kaiser Fung is a professional statistician for Vimeo and author of Junk Charts, a blog devoted to the critical examination of data and graphics in the mass media. His latest book is Number Sense: How to Use Big Data to Your Advantage. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, in addition to degrees from Princeton and Cambridge Universities, and teaches statistics at New York University.

[AFCEastFan]

Plus you know you guys really need to change the formula here where anyone who says anything against your team cannot be telling the truth.  They have to be sore losers or in it for the money or fans of a rival team or jealous of the successes achieved by the Patriots or some other bizarre reason.

 

It reminds me of the "nuts and sluts" defense that the Bill Clinton spin machine managed to use successfully for so many years against his former girlfriends.  Or the Lance Armstrong defense where they blamed negative stories on the jealousy of lesser cyclists.  It reminds me of the Madoff responses in the early years to his lack of transparency or the Bill Cosby responses to stories coming out about him.  The problem is that in ALL of those cases, Clinton, Armstrong, Madoff and Cosby, THEY were the ones who were lying through their teeth all along and the people trying to smear the messengers were the ones who were covering up the truth.

 

Just like the Patriots and Patriots fans are doing here.

 

There is a stench of something rotting up in New England and the only people who do not see anything wrong are the ones who live amid that stench every day.

 

 

I got to hand it to you, not only are you my second favorite person from Oceanside, but you are also the undisputed master of the false analogy.  I can't wait until you start comparing the Patriots' ineligible receiver formations to the rape and mutilation of innocent puppies. 

[PatsFanTX]

 

There is a stench of something rotting up in New England and the only people who do not see anything wrong are the ones who live amid that stench every day.

Blah, blah, blah.

You just can't accept the fact that the Patriots have dominated the NFL for the last 15 years.

In your jealous and envious world which you live, I'm sure you will come up with many more excuses.

[EM31]

This article best sums up my views on the topic:

 

https://hbr.org/2015/01/an-important-data-lesson-from-an-inconsequential-football-scandal

 

An Important Data Lesson from an Inconsequential Football Scandal

 

As “Deflategate” rattles the National Football League in the run-up to this year’s Super Bowl, data analysts have swooped in, including Warren Sharp, one of many self-styled football analysts who blog about the topic. In a Slate article he analyzes the fumbling rate of the New England Patriots — the team accused of purposefully underinflating footballs to gain an advantage. The headline to his analysis calls the Patriots’ fumble rate compared to the rest of the league “nearly impossible.”

Sharp, you might think, found the smoking gun — a statistic that proves that the Patriots cheated. Only a patient reader who persists to the last paragraph will see that Sharp ultimately admits that New England’s spectacular performance on the metric could be explained in any number of ways, including legitimate ones like perfecting ball security techniques or practicing prevention.

In short, the data say the Patriots are excellent at preventing fumbles. It says nothing about why.

This distinction represents one of big data analysis’ most under-appreciated problems: talking about reverse causation. In reverse causation problems, we know the result and we work backwards to understand the causes.

Reverse causation investigations have the opposite structure from A/B tests, in which we vary known causes, and observe how the variations affect an outcome. If the number of visitors to your website jumped after you changed the image on your Facebook page, you conclude that the new photo is the reason for the traffic surge. (Note: Good A/B test construction can help you see most likely causes; bad A/B test construction creates its own set of problems.).

By contrast, the biggest obstacle to solving reverse causation is the infinite number of possible causes that might influence the known outcome. This is compounded by the fact that we want to assign a cause. So when some data is plucked out of a large set that fits a narrative we may have already constructed, it’s very tempting to simply assign causation when it doesn’t exist.

Most of the time, though, the data offer hints, but no proof. Sharp’s article on the Patriots is one such case. When reading this style of data journalism, pay attention to the structure of the statistical argument. Here is how I summarize Sharp’s:

    New England is an outlier in the plays-per-fumbles-lost metric, performing far better than any other team (1.8x above the NFL team average).

    Different ways of visualizing and re-formulating the metric yield the same conclusion that New England is the outlier.

    There is a “dome effect.” Teams whose home stadiums are indoors typically suffer 10 fewer fumbles than the outdoors teams. New England is a non-dome team that surpasses most dome teams on plays-per-total-fumbles. If dome teams are removed from the analysis, New England is a statistical outlier.

    Assuming that the distribution of the metric by team is a bell curve, the chance that New England could have achieved such an extraordinary level of play per fumbles lost is extremely remote.

    Therefore, it is “nearly impossible” for any team to possess such an ability to prevent fumbles … unless the team is cheating.

Points 1 to 4 are essentially slightly different reiterations of the known outcome. It is point five in which a connection is established between that outcome and its cause(s). But the causal link is tenuous at best. However suggestive, the data does not prove intent or guilt. It simply describes a statistical phenomenon.

Indeed, digging in on the Patriots data shows that they may not be much of an outlier. In the “dome” analysis, Sharp switched from looking at fumbles lost to total fumbles (which includes recovered fumbles). Other football data analysts have concluded (more than halfway down the page) that fumble recovery is mostly random, so plays per total fumbles is the more useful metric.

Given this new measure, the Patriots are not an outlier, as they’re second to the Atlanta Falcons in fumble performance. Only when Sharp removed all dome teams (the Falcons being one) could he argue that the Patriots were an outlier.

Sharp showed that it is almost impossible for an average team to attain such a low fumble rate, but we have no data that proves the Patriots or any particular team couldn’t achieve it in a legal way. And in fact, the dome analysis suggests there are legitimate methods to perform equally or slightly better than the Patriots did — just look at the Falcons. Unless you want to allege the Falcons also tampered with footballs. (Others have also since refuted this fumbles-prove-malicious-behavior narrative and corrected what seems to be a major flaw in Sharp’s approach: eliminating dome teams from analysis, intead of dome games. When that change is made, the Patriots seem to perform well, but not strangely well; not even the best).

To his credit, Sharp did not argue point five. Nevertheless, many readers and incurious reporters made this causal leap. Sharp helped them along by using a loaded phrase “nearly impossible” to sell the story.

And that’s the reverse causation problem we face. Big data is exposing all kinds of outliers and trends we hadn’t seen before and we’re assigning causes somewhat recklessly, because it makes a good story, or helps confirm our biases. You see this all the time in your Twitter stream: “7 Charts that Explain This.” Or “The One Chart that Tells You Why Something Is Happening.” We’re getting better and better at analyzing and visualizing big data to spot coincidences, outliers and trends. It’s getting easier and easier to convince ourselves of specific narratives without any real data to support them.

Most good statistical analysis will be narratively unsatisfying, loaded down with “we don’t know,” “it depends,” and “the data can’t prove that.”

You can see how this can become a big problem for companies wanting to exploit the big data they’re amassing. If you think about most practical data problems, they often concern reverse causation. The sales of a particular product suddenly plunged; what caused it? The number of measles cases spiked up in a neighborhood; how did it happen? People with a certain brand of phone tend to shop at certain stores; why is that? In cases like these, we know the outcome, and we often don’t know the cause.

The possibility of any number of causes tempts us to retrofit a narrative but we must resist it. The astute analyst is one who figures out how to bring a manageable structure to this work. See this post by statistician Andrew Gelman for further thoughts.

In the mean time, maintain a healthy skepticism the next time someone suggests they’ve found causation in the reverse. Their claims may be overblown.

Kaiser Fung is a professional statistician for Vimeo and author of Junk Charts, a blog devoted to the critical examination of data and graphics in the mass media. His latest book is Number Sense: How to Use Big Data to Your Advantage. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, in addition to degrees from Princeton and Cambridge Universities, and teaches statistics at New York University.

 

"Perfected the art of ball security" with a statistical jump in performance from one year (2006) to the next (2007) bigger than Bob Beamon's world record triple jump in Mexico City.  Did this unearthly coaching acumen suddenly materialize in the offseason between 2006 and 2007? So great is this coaching of ball security that it surpasses the rest of the league by more than several standard deviations.  So brilliant is this coaching of ball security in New England that players who have benefited from it suddenly manage to forget all of that "wisdom" the moment they are no longer playing with deflated footballs.

[EM31]

I got to hand it to you, not only are you my second favorite person from Oceanside, but you are also the undisputed master of the false analogy.  I can't wait until you start comparing the Patriots' ineligible receiver formations to the rape and mutilation of innocent puppies. 

 

You are right of course.  Everyone who questioned Bernie Madoff was simply a jealous competitor who could not beat Bernie's rate of return..... Just as everyone who is speaking up about the Patriots is really a jealous competitor, a disgruntled former employee or someone who is "in it for the money"....  

 

Seriously these excuses and deflections really do get old at some point.  That point passed a long time ago.

 

The Patriots cheated.

 

Again

 

That will be their legacy the same way it is Barry Bonds legacy.  Learn to enjoy the taste because it is never going to go away.

[EM31]

Blah, blah, blah.

You just can't accept the fact that the Patriots have dominated the NFL for the last 15 years.

In your jealous and envious world which you live, I'm sure you will come up with many more excuses.

 

Seriously you are like the 100 meter runner who has figured out how to start every race with a 15-meter head start and now who is getting offended when opponents question the legitimacy of those "wins".

 

My advice to you is the same as my advice to every other Pats fan.  Your team is viewed the same way as Barry Bonds home record is viewed.  As the product of cheating.  Learn to deal with it because this will be your reality for the rest of your lives.

[afosomf]

it is very simple, if you cant draft decently, cannot trust your QB to throw a 13 psi football, have no faith in your players to line up man on man, have to rely on illegal substitutions.....then just CHEAT...it will pay off in asterisked SB wins. 

[AFCEastFan]

Seriously you are like the 100 meter runner who has figured out how to start every race with a 15-meter head start and now who is getting offended when opponents question the legitimacy of those "wins".

 

My advice to you is the same as my advice to every other Pats fan.  Your team is viewed [by me and other like-minded haters] the same way as Barry Bonds home record is viewed.  As the product of cheating.  Learn to deal with it because this will be your reality for the rest of your lives.

 

 

Love the use of the passive voice here.  I added some clarifying language.  I will try my very hardest to learn how to deal with such a harsh reality . . . lol. 

[AFCEastFan]

 

"Perfected the art of ball security" with a statistical jump in performance from one year (2006) to the next (2007) bigger than Bob Beamon's world record triple jump in Mexico City.  Did this unearthly coaching acumen suddenly materialize in the offseason between 2006 and 2007? So great is this coaching of ball security that it surpasses the rest of the league by more than several standard deviations.  So brilliant is this coaching of ball security in New England that players who have benefited from it suddenly manage to forget all of that "wisdom" the moment they are no longer playing with deflated footballs.

 

 

You either didn't read the article, didn't understand it, or are so blinded by your anti-Patriots agenda that you do not care.  The portion of the article you quote so gleefully as a precursor to yet another of your ridiculous analogies is simply offered as one of many possible legitimate explanations for the improvement of the Patriots' fumble rates after 2006 (without taking a position on whether that is in fact the correct explanation).  Keep on hatin', hater.

[PatsFanTX]

Seriously these excuses and deflections really do get old at some point. That point passed a long time ago.

The Patriots cheated.

Again.

Stop your crying and whining.

Over the last 15 years, no team has won more Super Bowls, Conference Championships, Divisional Titles, playoff games and regular season games than the Patriots. No team will ever duplicate a sustained 15 year dynasty that we are seeing.

Hell, the Steelers, 49ers and Cowboys dynasties only lasted 4 or 5 years then they sucked for a decade.

[Thor99]

Blah, blah, blah.

You just can't accept the fact that the Patriots have dominated the NFL for the last 15 years.

In your jealous and envious world which you live, I'm sure you will come up with many more excuses.

My lady undergarments are starting to ride up.