Certified Legendary Thread Race for the flag, in squiggly lines

[threenewpadlocks]

Just to bounce off you.

What I took from your analysis - ignoring the larger issues the paper was actually about - was that a lot of center bounce results are about luck. So if as a coach you set up knowing that you can get a small, but consistent, advantage over an opposition that doesn't recognize this. The message isn't that contested ball, or center bounce wins are unimportant. It is quite clear from your paper that they are (+1.06). But, it is that thinking in a deterministic way provides an advantage to the coach that thinks probablistically. So what I took is that the analysis can help coaches and players think more clearly about how the game actually works, compared to how we traditionally think about it.

Thus, knowing that center bounce clearances = advantage, a coach would naturally focus a lot of attention on obtaining center bounce clearances. They would play more, and better quality players, in the center bounce area. They would set up for how best to take advantage of winning to center bounce. But, if you accept luck is probably more important you would set up to try and nullify the center bounce as much or more than trying to win it. And you would set up more and better quality players to 1) take advantage of a randomly bouncing ball, and 2) you would bias your structure a bit more toward losing the center clearance, knowing that because the ball will come in fast, the opposition will not have a good structure if you can get the ball and bring it out. You can tilt the (nominal) field of play in your direction. But, what you wouldn't do is to give up the center bounce entirely because then the opposition would change their set up knowing they would have control of the ball. Then you would essentially have a game style of playing in your defensive half and hoping to stop ball coming in fast and cleanly, then rebounding. The opposition coach would structure accordingly, boosting the center clearance and playing extra guys behind the ball. But, if you just adjusted a little bit you would still get some center clearances and force the opposition to set up to win the center clearance as priority, allowing you to tilt advantage your way.

Is that the right way to think about this sort of thing??

Game theory is a beautiful thing.

It's funny because there's a lot of game theory that goes on in coaching and development of game styles where clubs fight to a sort of arms race and it becomes a zero sum effort.

Take contested possessions. They're important, and the Hawks were rank 18 in that category and routinely criticised for that. But what they probably realised is that there's no point gunning to win contested possessions when 17 other clubs are also doing that.

There's also a lot of wank about clearance numbers and contested possession numbers when a lot of it is just noise or a result of the balance of the 22 you play.

Clearance win differential theoretically should correlate with more success, but it doesn't because it's just one small part of the wider game of footy. The Bulldogs' great clearance success this year is probably less to do with any philosophical success and simply our list has a lot of players with an inside midfield skillset so we rotate more players more often through midfield therefore we have fresher legs and unique matchups the opposition adjusts to.

 

[Frank Gallagher]

 

[Dr Tigris]

Game theory is a beautiful thing.

It's funny because there's a lot of game theory that goes on in coaching and development of game styles where clubs fight to a sort of arms race and it becomes a zero sum effort.

Take contested possessions. They're important, and the Hawks were rank 18 in that category and routinely criticised for that. But what they probably realised is that there's no point gunning to win contested possessions when 17 other clubs are also doing that.

There's also a lot of wank about clearance numbers and contested possession numbers when a lot of it is just noise or a result of the balance of the 22 you play.

Clearance win differential theoretically should correlate with more success, but it doesn't because it's just one small part of the wider game of footy. The Bulldogs' great clearance success this year is probably less to do with any philosophical success and simply our list has a lot of players with an inside midfield skillset so we rotate more players more often through midfield therefore we have fresher legs and unique matchups the opposition adjusts to.

I guess that is roughly what I was getting at. That a stat is not significantly different to chance doesn't mean it isn't important. It just means that the marginal level of improvement for effort put into that might be very small. But thinking through what that stat means could lead to important improvements.

I am (sort of) an evolutionary economist. So where a standard economist looks at the world as a closed system tending toward equilibrium, I look at the world as a relatively open system in an ongoing process of change. where the underlying dynamics, the rules of the game, keep changing due to innovation. Footy is similar. The game itself is fairly well structured - rules playing field etc. But how it works (how to win) keeps changing. It changes because of 2 things. 1) People keep learning from others and from their own innovations. They keep the good stuff and lose the bad (what is good and bad is situation specific - i.e. good at one time may become bad later and vice versa). 2) it is a system where small changes at the local level can lead to large changes at the system level. So a small change in how players are conditioned can lead to major changes in who wins. And so on.

Doing careful analysis of the game can lead to an understanding that of what is important and why. Then a small change to the game plan can lead to a couple of extra wins. All very interesting stuff.

 

[cryptor]

Game theory is a beautiful thing.

It's funny because there's a lot of game theory that goes on in coaching and development of game styles where clubs fight to a sort of arms race and it becomes a zero sum effort.

Take contested possessions. They're important, and the Hawks were rank 18 in that category and routinely criticised for that. But what they probably realised is that there's no point gunning to win contested possessions when 17 other clubs are also doing that.

There's also a lot of wank about clearance numbers and contested possession numbers when a lot of it is just noise or a result of the balance of the 22 you play.

Clearance win differential theoretically should correlate with more success, but it doesn't because it's just one small part of the wider game of footy. The Bulldogs' great clearance success this year is probably less to do with any philosophical success and simply our list has a lot of players with an inside midfield skillset so we rotate more players more often through midfield therefore we have fresher legs and unique matchups the opposition adjusts to.

The way some stats are recorded in our game is imo fundamentally flawed. When they're used to help rate players/teams and predict results you are introducing those flaws into your system.

Example:
A difficult kick sent inboard from a back flank straight to a teammate that results in successive plays that result in a goal is recorded as "efficient". In equal measure a mongrel kick >40m to a pack that neutralizes the ball when there were better options available is still considered an "efficient" kick.

Now I may not be entirely accurate with the conditions for an 'efficient kick' there but it is something similar to that. The point being that the recording of that stat would suggest that both kicks were equally good. We would know for certain that they were not. If you were to use disposal/kicking efficiency stats in your system then it would not give meaningful results.

Same kind of thing applies to clearances and contested possessions and probably a lot of other often quoted stats.

Even just using straight up scores as the Squiggle does is going to cover up flaws in that method. A team kicking 20.3.123 on a blustery, wet day is going to have the same result in the system as that same team kicking 17.21.123 on a 'perfect weather for footy' kind of day. Both scorelines are rated the same but inherently would tell a deeper story about the team involved.

 

[Dirty Bird]

Are we getting a woman's football squiggle

 

[GreyCrow]

Are we getting a woman's football squiggle

Had to use it again

 

[_Mike_]

Squiggle movement in the finals series only:

Still waiting for the flagpole with the only Bulldog flag remaining lit up

 

[Clems Knee]

Hi, Final Siren

I'm sure somewhere in these 352 pages someone has already asked this, but:

Have you run the seasons with all teams being equal for their attack and defensive figures?
In other words, can you run your best algorithm to show what advantage a team has based purely on where their home and away games are, rather than who they play?

 

[Richo83]

This is true. It has to be the right information. But ultimately the world is just one giant model of data flows. Theoretically the information in the world exists to predict with 100 percent accuracy. The question is how much of that information is attainable.

The world is probabilistic and deterministic, it is also slightly random, and sports have way too many variables to predict with 100% accuracy.

I don't believe in alternate universes as it would mean there are universes where I am sometimes wrong. The world is finite.

You don't have to believe in multiple universes to believe that the world is infinite in that there are an infinite array of possibilities that can happen at any given time, especially given the infinite array of variables.

You can predict the behavior of very simple things just before they happen with a high degree of probability, but football teams are not very simple things.

 

[Richo83]

Clinton lost a) because they didn't look at state by state polls because they presumed state polls shifted together b) because a lot of undecideds didn't say which way they were going to vote but ended up voting for Trump and c) because the models told us economics would mean a close race, but 538 ignored those models and focused more on the candidates themselves and the effects of scandals.

That said, the national polls weren't that inaccurate, it's just that the state polls weren't. Silver stuffed up but even he said he was worried about the lack of data in states like Michigan where there was not enough polling for Silver to be completely confident.

 

[igon value]

This is true. It has to be the right information. But ultimately the world is just one giant model of data flows. Theoretically the information in the world exists to predict with 100 percent accuracy. The question is how much of that information is attainable.

So you can solve the three body problem?

 

[iluvparis]

Clinton lost a) because they didn't look at state by state polls because they presumed state polls shifted together b) because a lot of undecideds didn't say which way they were going to vote but ended up voting for Trump and c) because the models told us economics would mean a close race, but 538 ignored those models and focused more on the candidates themselves and the effects of scandals.

That said, the national polls weren't that inaccurate, it's just that the state polls weren't. Silver stuffed up but even he said he was worried about the lack of data in states like Michigan where there was not enough polling for Silver to be completely confident.

He also gave Trump something like a 20-25 per cent chance of winning. Those kind of upsets happen in AFL every single week.

 

[Martyn_30_]

You don't have to believe in multiple universes to believe that the world is infinite in that there are an infinite array of possibilities that can happen at any given time, especially given the infinite array of variables.

Actually only one possibility exists and that's what actually happened. Anything that happens has many events leading up to it, so given that can't change what happened could also never have changed and therefore was only one thing possible.

The bulldogs winning last years premiership was actually the only result possible, and a belief of anything else is made up by people.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Randomizor]

Actually only one possibility exists and that's what actually happened. Anything that happens has many events leading up to it, so given that can't change what happened could also never have changed and therefore was only one thing possible.

The bulldogs winning last years premiership was actually the only result possible, and a belief of anything else is made up by people.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

That's deterministic isn't it?

You could be the most well-drilled, best-coached team, but your coach and all your best players could still be struck by a meteorite the day of the GF.

The universe is random.

 

[The Speaker]

That's deterministic isn't it?

You could be the most well-drilled, best-coached team, but your coach and all your best players could still be struck by a meteorite the day of the GF.

The universe is random.

We do not live in a realm of existence capable of allowing us to understand the determining causes of events until after they happen. That does not make the universe random.

 

[Randomizor]

We do not live in a realm of existence capable of allowing us to understand the determining causes of events until after they happen. That does not make the universe random.

But it is from our perspective

 

[The Speaker]

But it is from our perspective

Is it?

 

[Randomizor]

Is it?

Potato

 

[Richo83]

Actually only one possibility exists and that's what actually happened. Anything that happens has many events leading up to it, so given that can't change what happened could also never have changed and therefore was only one thing possible.

The bulldogs winning last years premiership was actually the only result possible, and a belief of anything else is made up by people.
On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

I'm aware of causality, I'm also aware of unpredictability. Footscray could have suffered six broken legs in the grand final and be screwed. There's enough unpredictability and variability to mean that any prediction system can't be 100% foolproof.

And don't forget that many of the factors that ensured Footscray would win happened late in the year. This system is a rolling predictor that runs throughout the year, does Seeds expect the squiggle to know who will win now given we have no idea about injures? What about before the finals? What about before the grand final? Injuries happen.

I can predict what will happen next second with almost perfect accuracy, I can't do the same for what will happen in the next week, month or year. This is what makes it unrealistic to expect a foolproof model. Any foolproof model would be just dumb luck, like final siren's example of the seat which is always used when a team wins. Predictive? Yes, an actual relevant cause? No.

 

[Richo83]

He also gave Trump something like a 20-25 per cent chance of winning. Those kind of upsets happen in AFL every single week.

Yes, although he was getting quite cocky in his reads, even though he said before the election that given the economy the election should be closer than the polls were suggesting. He also admitted that there wasn't enough polling for some states. The overwhelming number of national polls averaged out to about a 2-5% national win for Clinton, which happened.

I think the true read is America is more patchy and inconsistent in how it votes than in the past, probably because its such an economically and socially divided nation now. So national reads are not that valuable.

 

[The 747]

Every now and then when I worry about how stupid the world seems, I can come into this thread and read people posting intelligent things. Thank yall.

 

[gavaniacono]

Yes, although he was getting quite cocky in his reads, even though he said before the election that given the economy the election should be closer than the polls were suggesting. He also admitted that there wasn't enough polling for some states. The overwhelming number of national polls averaged out to about a 2-5% national win for Clinton, which happened.

I think the true read is America is more patchy and inconsistent in how it votes than in the past, probably because its such an economically and socially divided nation now. So national reads are not that valuable.

Politics has always been local and not all locales are equal.

 

[gavaniacono]

We do not live in a realm of existence capable of allowing us to understand the determining causes of events until after they happen. That does not make the universe random.

There may be aleatory events but they arent random if a preceding set of events or conditions limits what possible outcomes there are. They are also not purely deterministic. For a fun and fascinating take on this check out the use of bead game analysis to provide insight into how nature may work. Localised events within limited options can create the illusion of randomness but can also be seen to follow some kind of self catalytic rules which may be good news for athiests but bad news for Richmond supporters.

 

[Seppo]

Hurry up Final Siren

 

[Gavin Excell]

Every now and then when I worry about how stupid the world seems, I can come into this thread and read people posting intelligent things. Thank yall.

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