Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinordi
I think one of the reasons there's so much antipathy to "advanced stats" is that they refute long held tropes, biases and stories we tell ourselves about team X or player Y. We don't like that, we like the story of "heart" and a player being "clutch." It creates a causal and hence relatable nature to the game. Watching the game and drawing conclusions is available to anyone who wants to do it whereas those who want and are able to evaluate data is a much smaller segment of the population. That's seen as an attack by many, that somehow there knkowledge of the game isn't as valuable as new knowledge, of course there would be almost a visceral pushback.
But that's the precise value of the stats, they provide a way to 'ground-truth' your biases and assumptions. Are they perfect, no but should that preclude them from being used? Are they any less perfect that Joe fan sitting on the couch complaining about how terrible Phaneuf is?
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I would say the biggest antipathy towards advanced stats from the average hockey fan is that the people "promoting it" to such a piss poor job of it.
Too often it seems there is an your either with it or against it attitude from advanced stats folks and if you don't agree with them it is because you are an idiot, stuck in old ways or too stupid to understand the stats. There seems to be little desire or ability to acknowledge that there can be flaws in the system. Too often I see advanced stats guy fall back on the fact that the "stats don't lie, your eyes" do BS argument.
That is also the other thing I find many stats guys also act as though they are the be all and end all and they do a better job than any human could. I doubt stats guys are right in this regard but whether they are or aren't nobody likes to be told this.
I think stats have a role as a secondary way to judge what is going on on the ice. They will always be behind watching the actual games but used in conjunction with observations they can help to point out some biases that may exist in certain people's assessments when watching and point out an area that is being missed. I think if Advanced Stats (that is such a garbage and misleading name as well) advocates did a better job of explaining how they could be useful in working with traditional views that they would be much better received than the current approach of telling people they are too dumb to understand it if they don't agree that Corsi + is the greatest thing since sliced bread.