I saw Nassim interviewed regarding the Black Swan maybe a couple months ago. Extremely, extremely intriguing discussion. I do not believe his hypothesis, but of course, it's the nature of the human mind that we will develop a narrative around a series of the events, leading inexorably to the conclusion ex post facto.
For example, we could call 9/11 a "black swan" event, that is, a highly improbable one, which might be comforting to a whole host of people. I do believe, however, that the events prior to 9/11 - including the previous bombing of the WTC, the continuing US presence in the Arabian penninsula after Gulf War I, and the continued rise of terror groups and anti-American sentiment during that time, militate for the interpretation that 9/11 was, in fact, part of a history around which we can construct a narrative, whose presence is a fair model of events, rather than an imposition of psuedo-reason on those events.
Similarly, the economic troubles of the Soviet Union prefaced the rise of Gorbachev (if not him, then a future equivalent,) as a highly probable outcome. Gorbachev's openings with the West, again, were a likely outcome of an economically exhausted USSR. So was the "sudden fall of Communism" a "Black Swan?" The difficulty is there is no disproving the hypothesis.
These are 2 non-sports examples.
Going back to the arguments in play here about "clutchness":
I think necessary preconditions must be present for a high degree of success during "big game" moments. Let's take Adam Vinatieri.
His leg strength was never "automatic" in the best of times. But up to about 2004, he could kick 50+ yard field goals regularly, say, half the time.
Then, he couldn't.
What does that have to do with missing a 29-yarder (for instance?) Maybe nothing. Maybe, his overall accuracy suffers if the basics -- getting enough leg into the ball to make the kick -- must be "recalibrated."
What other causality might come into play? Perhaps being surrounded by a fan base, a team, and a local media which believes all his clutch kicks were ultimately unimportant, would generate a psychological effect.
And perhaps it would not.
Finally, it is just possible that Vinatieri's psychology is influenced by a self-identification with a former team. Or, it could just be coincidence that he missed his first field-goal in the RCA Dome specifically against the New England Patriots.
Everything's a coincidence, if you argue for regression to the mean: His leg strength has coincidentally declined, exactly when the player goes past the physical peak years, and into his thirties. His accuracy unpredictably and serendipitously collapses specifically against his old team. Oh and let's not forget, the NE Patriots front office got lucky, and bet against these clutch kicks continuing into AV's later years.
The problem with football is that, with the exception of throws by a QB or rushes by a RB over a season, there are very few stats with any statistical significance, because of the miniscule sample size from which to gather the stats. How many "game-winning" and "game tying" field goals can one draw from?
This establishes a paucity of statistically significant evidence; yet, during a certain period of time we see one behavior, and during another period of time we see another behavior. The fact that explanations abound between the two behaviors can be explained by chance, or it can be explained by the differences in conditions, age, etc.
Scant statistical evidence, however, is not the same thing as utter absence of evidence, and to consign virtually all phenomena in football to random chance is nonsensical.
By the way, I don't think I truly have enough data, after only 12 touchdowns this season, that Randy Moss has in any way influenced Tom Brady's stats this year.... given the paucity of the data set, to be really confident in my analysis, I have to call both Moss and Brady "lucky." This was, by the way, the favored approach of fans of other teams when discussing the success of the Patriots, before they hit upon a causal explanation, i.e., that the Pats cheat.
The notion that the Patriots play good football seems only to come into play at the margins among opposing fans.
People being "due" for one outcome or another, by the way, has no validity in either sports or statistics, unless viewed as part of a large data set, and ex post facto. One is never "due" for a home run, a six-TD game, a 200-yard game, or anything else. But when you look back over a period of time, you can say someone was "due" for something, in a very vague sense. For instance, if after 10 years, Laurence Maroney averages 6 touchdowns a season, and if Laurence Maroney scores 2 this week after scoring none all season, you could say he was due to do that. You can not predict that Maroney will do so, based on the fact that he has not. A slump is not some counterintuitive predictor of superior performance at any given point in the slump, any more than losing 100 bucks on a slot machine is proof that some time in the next 100 dollar run, the machine will pay out a jackpot.
PFnV
