Hoops

36ers +/- for every game plus season total

Cooper,after all, played best for us in his last season.
Garlepp played about 5minutes, last season.

I think that understanding the combos is actually the key to understanding this +/- business.

Hill certainly comes out looking a lot better based on + / -

A study was undertaking comparing Babe Ruth and Don Bradman. The yanks believed Babe Ruth was a far better sportsman in his field than the Don. To prove this, someone looked at the scoring averages. Babe's average was X SD's away from the mean and the Don's was over X SD's from the mean suggesting that Don was a much better sportsman.

The only problem with +/- is we assume that they are the only variable on the court. Probably need to also look at the scoring rate (ppm) for both teams when a player is on court, and off court.

Now, at the risk of sounding like a hater, let's consider Balls.

LOCATION AVE SD
Home 0.2 10.0
Road (7.0) 7.1

His average +/- on the road drops off by around 1 standard deviation.

Lets consider the Hillbilly
LOCATION AVE SD
Home 1.75 12
Road 1.89 5.4

His average +/- is is essentially the same, but his SD is reduced indicating a more consistent road performance.

Isaac, one of the "secrets" of statistics is to look at the flipside as you say. Sometimes, the Probability of something happening doesn't necessarily mean the probability of something not occurring.

For example, get 26 people in a room. Now you would think the probability of two people having the same birthday is 2/365 (1 in 182.5), but re-word it to "at least 2 people sharing the birthday", and the P (at least) = 1 - P (none). Re-work the calcs and the probability of at least 2 people in 26 sharing the same birthday is around 50%. I am sure that of the "40 odd wankers on Hoops SA" as quoted to me by a former coach, there would be at least one born on the 11th of March.

Now, standard deviation (SD) is an important thing, but SD is proportion to the number of samples (n), and the "range". Also, the important thing with stats is whether events are dependent or independent.

For example, consider roulette. The green slot means that if you were to bet on black on the 50:50 patch, your chance of winning is 46%, and loosing 54%. But SD is proportion to the number of times you place a bet, therefore the more you bet (play), the tighter the variation becomes and so even though you might win the first few bets, after say 1,000 bets, the average becomes -4% +/- a few %. You an guaranteed a loss.

Looking at the +/-,
LOCATION Ave SD
Home 1.22 8.98
Road (5.39) 8.50

Because the SD's of the +/- are basically the same, what this tells me is that there are two processes at work. Now, road performance is essentially 0.75 SD's lower that home performance, something called a "t-test" would confirm the Sixers are worse on the road.

NBA Agent - I believe it's the nett points for (+) or against (-) the 6ers while the player was on court. So Ballinger, who sees a lot of court time, probably would end up in the negatives in a losing season. The question is whether the losing season has to do with his being on court or he's coming up negative because the other 6ers have been rubbish most of the time and his +/- suffered by virtue of being on court a lot? I leave that for others to comment on- I don't know.

Should spouses go on tour?

Pussy cats away.....

Brad Hill 17
Craig Winder 1
Tom Daly 1
Sam Harris -4
Darren Ng -23
Aaron Bruce -34
Daniel Johnson -36
Jeff Dowdell -37
Eddie Shannon -40
Rhys Carter -42
Mitchell Creek -45
Troy De Vries -49
Ron Howard -51
Adam Ballinger -63
Jacob Holmes -64

Tigers at home.....

Daniel Johnson 27
Rhys Carter 25
Darren Ng 23
Brad Hill 21
Jacob Holmes 21
Eddie Shannon 17
Tom Daly 9
Mitchell Creek 6
Aaron Bruce 4
Jeff Dowdell 4
Ron Howard 3
Sam Harris 3
Adam Ballinger 2
Troy De Vries -8
Craig Winder -17