Physicist proves Pats cheated by trying to debunk it.

Drew Fustin a PhD from Chicago, who is right up front admitting he's a Patriots fan, goes into some detail debunking Warren Sharps data that shows the Patriots fumble less than any other team from 2007 onwards.

I just left him hoisted on his own petard by showing his own formula proves that the Patriots odds of doing what they did are 1.4 million to 1.

There's math, but hang in there 12's, we're the most literate people in the nation:

http://drewfustin.com/2015/01/27/patrio ... -comments/

First he challenges some of Sharps assumptions. Now he's totally on the mark in his challenges, that's what makes his final downfall so very sweet.

Challenge #1: Don't throw out domed teams.
Sharp throws out domed teams and looks at just teams that play outdoors because domed teams don't fumble as often. Fustin correctly points out that you shouldn't throw out domed teams in games where they played outdoors.

This is a very valid challenge. The data that he then gives is compiled using domed teams while playing outdoors. Better data than Sharp used.

Challenge #2: Don't cherry pick a rolling 5 year average. Totally on the mark here. in 2013 the Patriots had a LOT of fumbles and ranked 21st. Using anything but a rolling 5 year average doesn't make the Pats look so bad. Sharp shouldn't have done that.

As I will soon show, Fustin just drew his own petard. I will soon leave him hoisted upon it.

Challenge #3: Don't say this can only occur once in 16,233.77 instances

Now he points out another mistake that Sharp made. It's only a mistake, however, because of challenges 1 and 2. Using correct data by including domed teams that played outdoors, that number is going to change. He then gives us the formula to calculate what the actual % chance is that the Patriots do as well as they've done. But it's not an apples to apples comparison. He decides to show us instead what the odds are of the Pats finishing in the top 3 in least fumbles are in a 5 year period.

Umm, Dr. Fustin, didn't you just say that the rolling 5 year average was flawed?

Petard, prepare to hoist.

He gives us his formula and calculates that finishing in the top 3 4 times in 5 years has only a .004% chance of happening, which comes to 2800 to 1 odds. That's based upon merely a 3/32 chance of finishing top 3. It doesn't include skill or scheme. So a team that really stresses hanging onto the ball and calls plays that are less likely to result in turnovers and only hires players who are less likely to fumble will do better.

All of which is true.

Here's his data, adjusted correctly for domed teams playing outdoors.

2007-present NE ranking for plays per fumble: 2nd, 5th, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 21st and 2nd

2002-2--6 NE ranking for plays per fumble: 14th, 10th, 18th, 10th, 19th

Now, fine, the odds of finishing top 3 four out of five years is about 2800 to one. But Dr. Fustin just said using rolling five year averages was cherry picking didn't he? So let's use his words of wisdom against him shall we?

HOIST AWAY!!!!

Using his own formula, what are the odds that NE can finish top 3 six out of eight years as his very own data shows?

p=a^8+8a^6(1-a) where a=3/32.

p=.000007% or 1.4 million to 1 odds.

Sorry, doc, don't try to bait and switch us Seahawk fans, we're too sharp for those kinds of con games. By his own admission, NE finished top 3 six of eight seasons and by his own formula, the odds of that are 1.4 million to 1 if you don't calculate for skill and scheme, just luck.

Only problem is, he himself points out that NE doesn't hire players less likely to fumble, in fact, he shows they are 23% MORE likely to fumble when they play for other teams than when they play for NE.

So strike skill from the reason NE always ranks so high. Scheme did not change drastically from 2006 to 2007.

No, you cannot adjust for skill and scheme cannot make up the difference because scheme has changed only slightly. That just leaves cheating.

Great work, post.
:th2thumbs:

If anyone thinks the Patriots scheme changed in 2007 and that's why they don't fumble and were able to do something that's 1.4 million to 1 improbable, here's a good link about the Patriots offensive schemes in the Brady era.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap200000 ... ts-offense

While in 2007 they went to a spread, they abandoned it in 2008, went back to it in 2009, then abandoned it again, embraced it again, abandoned it again.

In short, for the entirety of Brady's tenure, the Patriots haven't stuck to any scheme consistently.

So you can now throw out skill and scheme as possibilities for how they managed to do something that's 1.4 million to 1 odds of doing.

They cheated.

I read this as "Warren Sapp's data" and was really confused as I read on. Took me like 4 times reading the first part through til I realized I'm a dumba** haha

Pats Fans Response: So Doc you're saying it's 1.4 million to one...So that means there is a chance! Deflate-Gate is over what a wicked pissah!!!!

Your numbers a little off, by about a million or so:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/your ... -analyses/

Tony CahnCuhd":1nys7ojl said:

Your numbers a little off, by about a million or so:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/your ... -analyses/

Click to expand...

ummm, linking me to an article that links to the article by Dr. Fustin that just got hoisted on his own petard tells me you didn't pass reading comprehension in school. Or would you care to show me where it says the odds were only 400,000 to 1 using Fustin's updated numbers?

I'd be really interested in seeing that.

I would guess that most of the debunkers are Pats fans. But they do have a point, Sharp did twist the data unfairly and when it's straightened out it does not paint the Pats as a huge outlier. Still good enough to be suspicious, but no longer a smoking gun.

Of course, everyone knows the Pats cheated. It's just that the fumble advantage they got from it wasn't quite as big as we thought.

Nice work! Must be a reason people can't comment on Fustin's article. He probably doesn't want to be challenged.

Great post, but why did you have to keep calling me a Retard when I read it ?

kearly":1v2p5i19 said:

Of course, everyone knows the Pats cheated. It's just that the fumble advantage they got from it wasn't quite as big as we thought.

Click to expand...

Actually, I think what Salish is saying is that the fumble advantage was even bigger over a longer period of time.

kearly":12xz2n1h said:

I would guess that most of the debunkers are Pats fans. But they do have a point, Sharp did twist the data unfairly and when it's straightened out it does not paint the Pats as a huge outlier. Still good enough to be suspicious, but no longer a smoking gun.

Of course, everyone knows the Pats cheated. It's just that the fumble advantage they got from it wasn't quite as big as we thought.

Click to expand...

1.4 million to 1 odds are better than Sharps original 16k to 1 odds? I thought I was pretty clear: Using Sharps rolling 5 year average then the odds weren't 16k, more like 2.8k. But, as the good PhD in the article states, it is cherry picking to use a 5 year average.

However, using the PhD's very own formula and calculating for the odds over the entire 8 year period - which he says is what a good statistician should have done - you find the odds are 1.4 MILLION to 1 that the Patriots or any other team could finish in the top 3 in plays per fumble in 6 of 8 years.

Now, we'ver ruled out scheme because as the article I posted later in this thread shows, the Patriots don't stick to any one scheme. And we've eliminated skill, since, as the PhD himself says, there is still a 23% difference from Pats to nonPats. That just leaves cheating.