Karl Ravech of ESPN makes a common error in probability. While broadcasting for the Little League World Series, Ravech said about Waipahu, Hawaii making it to the championship game twice in three years, "The odds of the same team from the same town making the championship game twice in a three year span is 50 million." I don't doubt the math behind that statement, but the odds of Waipahu dong this isn't really relevant. The relevant probability is the probability of ANY team from ANY town making the championship game twice in ANY three year span. I would guess that probability is at least 5-10 times more likely.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
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Also, the probability of a team making in one year and then in another are not independent events. If a team is awesome, they are more likely to be awesome again than some random team.
ReplyDeleteVery true. To give credit where credit is due, I first came across this reality of probability in Nassim Taleb's "Fooled By Randomness."
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