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Lies,
Damned Lies and Statistics
by Paul Davidson
Now
don't get me wrong, I love statistics generally. As a big fan of
American sport you have to. I can look at the sports pages of any
American paper, the Sacramento Bee and the Plains Dealer in Cleveland
being two of my particular favourites and more or less understand
all what I am looking at. That is if I can find the sports pages.
Rather
than putting right at the back, like proper papers do, it can take
ages to find the separate section stuffed somewhere in the middle,
usually between fourteen pages of classified adds and twelve pages
of cartoons. On Sundays it can take most of the morning to find
the sports section at all (sport, see section 15E it will proudly
say across the top of the front page), if you haven't got a hernia
of course from carrying the two and a half tons of dead tree back
to your hotel room.
Anyway,
I digress. Having found the section in question, I can cope happily
with "earned run average" and "runs batted in" in baseball, "average
yards per carry" and "Quarterback average" in their football, "offensive
rebounds" and "assists" in basketball and even "penalty minutes"
and "plus/minus ratings" in ice hockey. I always think of the Americans
as statistics happy at the best of times. You know, like, "how many
times have we invaded a small country to help free their people"
or "how many years since our President was found guilty of being
a crook".
It's
all a part of the American way as far as I see it. What I do object
to however, is when these statistics come hurtling across the channel
and seep into our national sports. Let me explain: There I was,
laying on the sofa, half watching the Newcastle - Arsenal game the
other Sunday afternoon when, a bit bored with it, I picked up the
new all sports Sunday paper Sport First. Now I personally think
that this is a great publication.
For
those of you that have not seen a copy yet, it gives really good
coverage of all and I mean all the football matches from the day
before. It gives a whole page to each Premiership game and has a
good size report of every Nationwide game involving a southern team
as well. Not only does it give all the scorers and gate attendance's
from all the senior non-leagues, it also lists all the players that
contested each match, with two pages of non-league match reports.
It lists every result in the country from the Squibble and Ducketts
Cam Shafts Midland League Senior to the Wanglefurters Supergrip
Linoleum League Division Three South, as it were and much, much
more besides.
What
it also gives you, as do all the other Sunday papers, is an in depth
preview of the Sunday afternoon Premiership game. This is where
it differs from anything else I have read on this side of the Atlantic.
With the help of our good friends at Sky tv (we are only doing it
for the fans you understand), they often do a comparison of two
of the forthcoming games star players. In this edition it was, quite
naturally enough, Alan Shearer and Nicolas Anelka. Fine, no problems
there.
It
is when I actually looked at the comparisons that I got a bit dumfounded.
With the obvious help of Andy Gray's replay machines they compare
such things as, minutes on the pitch, shots on target (including
goals), tackles made and even total crosses and cross completion.
It is soon after this that it gets a bit ridiculous with the mind
boggling statistic of "dribble completion".
Where
on earth do they get that from and come to that, what the hell does
it mean? I thought at first that it must be some reference to the
amount of times that the players involved expectorated (or gobbed
to you and me) during the game (Lee Dixon was the star of this particular
match with some quite stunning close ups that probably won the cameraman
an award).
The
paper goes on to list the fact that Anelka has 103 "dribbles and
runs" (too many curried snails?), with a completion rate of 62%,
compared to only 33 by Shearer, although he has a completion rate
of 67%. Now I know that the world has gone mad. Goals
scored and overall shots on goal ok. Total passes and fouls committed,
no problem (This last statistic by the way shows what everyone outside
Tyneside and Blackburn have always known, that Shearer is a dirty
b******). But come on. Dribble completion. Is this not one statistic
too far?
Has
the Americanisation of Britain completely taken over? First it was
a McDonalds on every street corner (we have now got five of them
in Watford), now it is this. What's next, playing the national anthem
before any event larger than a back garden barbecue, or maybe giving
every psychopath in the country a handgun to prove we are a free
country. I think I will have to go back to reading the Sunday Sport.
No statistics maybe, but how does that girl on page seven walk in
a straight line without falling over?
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