Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
I was speaking rhetorically – since I was talking about sportscasters' rhetoric. They are sadly liable to make absolute statements by way of hyperbole: another way of constructing narratives out of nothing games. If they haven't used the word ‘unstoppable’ with reference to a team's momentum, it is because they haven't thought of it yet, not because they object to it as a tribe. And I do seem to recall the term being used from time to time.
Anyway: If this so-called momentum can completely change direction from one play to the next, then it is not a force at all. Not an unstoppable one, not a strong one, not even a weak one. Water down my statement as much as you like, and it remains true that the two things claimed are mutually contradictory.
In fact, I've read some of the work by hockey statisticians who have tried to quantify ‘momentum’. They concluded that it doesn't exist. Unfortunately, as so often happens, the links have since been borked.
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They may have 'concluded' that it doesn't exist (incorrectly), but in reality, all they would have been able to actually demonstrate is a
lack of evidence that it does exist.
Momentum is a very difficult thing to quantify and measure. And the simple fact of the matter is that very little effort or research has gone into this with respect to sports.
So let's look at a much larger field, where
magnitudes more research has been done - finance, and specifically, securities trading.
One of the challenges with testing for momentum is the amount of noise you have to circumvent. Another is defining what it is you're looking for. Yet, in testing for momentum with respect to securities prices, there is now enough evidence that it is generally accepted as existing and persisting.
Most of the research I am familiar with was done by people (including Nobel laureates) who believe it
shouldn't exist. And if it did, it should be an anomaly that would get priced out, the moment is was discovered. However, it appears, very much to their surprise, that it does seem to exist. And it persists and is pursuable (though consistently profiting from it remains extremely elusive, net of costs).
If we then look to determine whether momentum in securities prices holds any information that is at all applicable to sports, the thing I would mention here is that, unlike securities prices, humans are emotional and demonstrate things such as confidence (and a lack thereof). And that being the case,
human behavior should be far more susceptible to a phenomenon like momentum than an inert thing like securities prices would be.
One note here: one of the things stemming from the research is that momentum is not always observable - in fact, more often than not, it isn't. But if we make the tests stringent enough, we can observe it in about 10-20% of securities at any given time. In other words, at its strongest, it is (or becomes) observable.
If we bring that lesson back to the (very rudimentary) testing done in sports, it becomes easy to see that in all likelihood, the reason they discovered nothing is that they haven't refined the tests enough yet. If you look for momentum across the board, it will get completely buried by noise. However, (at least as was found with securities prices), if you refine the tests properly, it is there.
Note: please don't come back with data mining arguments and such - the research I am referring to has been ongoing for decades by academics that don't need to be told how to conduct research. It has proven to be consistent, persistent, robust, and quantifiable.
None of this proves that there
is momentum in sports. But one thing is certain: there is
not proof that there is no such thing as momentum. And if we simply watch the games, it appears to be there for all to see, despite a lack of quantifiable evidence supporting it, to date.