Goal scoring problems?

[Ian Royal]

What your science and stats is failing to recognise is why you get excited. It's not because you expect something to happen but because you want something to happen and actually want the excitement and euphoria of the expectation.

It's like buying a lottery ticket and planning how you'd spend the £5m. It doesn't mean you think you'll win!

Exactamundo.

[Snowball]

What your science and stats is failing to recognise is why you get excited. It's not because you expect something to happen but because you want something to happen and actually want the excitement and euphoria of the expectation.

It's like buying a lottery ticket and planning how you'd spend the £5m. It doesn't mean you think you'll win!

Utterly illogical.

We don't get excited when Fedders is about to take a goal-kick, or a full-back has the ball on the edge of our box
yet we are far more likely to score within 30 seconds of a Fedders kick-out.



No, the reason we get excited is because EMOTIONALLY we believe
we have a "good chance" of a goal, even though, if we paused and
used our brains we'd know that was dumb.

It is a fact that last season we scored 1 in 77 and went about 140 corners without a goal.



Why then, when we fail to win do we sometimes hear, "But we had 18 corners to their 2!"

Corner-count has almost zero relationship to goals from corners

[Snowball]

What your science and stats is failing to recognise is why you get excited. It's not because you expect something to happen but because you want something to happen and actually want the excitement and euphoria of the expectation.

It's like buying a lottery ticket and planning how you'd spend the £5m. It doesn't mean you think you'll win!

Exactamundo.

So who buys a lottery ticket and starts shouting, Uou RRRRRRRZZZZ!


Ridiculous.


I buy lottery tickets EXPECTING TO LOSE.
I do NOT get excited.
AT ALL.

But y'never know...

[Ian Royal]

Corners, whilst relatively easily defended, are still a free kick into the box and close surrounding area, which is where the vast majority of goals are scored from. It is a sign of pressure on the opposition goal, because to get one, you almost have to have been causing a defence problems.
Danger area to danger area.

Goal kicks are punts up field, which rarely make the box and an attacking player, without further assistance.
Safe area to building area.

It's pretty clear it has nothing to do with statistics and all to do with context.

[Snowball]

Corners, whilst relatively easily defended, are still a free kick into the box and close surrounding area, which is where the vast majority of goals are scored from. It is a sign of pressure on the opposition goal, because to get one, you almost have to have been causing a defence problems.
Danger area to danger area.

Goal kicks are punts up field, which rarely make the box and an attacking player, without further assistance.
Safe area to building area.

It's pretty clear it has nothing to do with statistics and all to do with context.

What is that, in English?

[Snowball]

Corners, whilst relatively easily defended, are still a free kick into the box and close surrounding area, which is where the vast majority of goals are scored from.

and last season we scored one every 77 corners

what exactly is your point?

[Ian Royal]

Do you want me to express it in binary so there are numbers for you to understand?

[ZacNaloen]

What your science and stats is failing to recognise is why you get excited. It's not because you expect something to happen but because you want something to happen and actually want the excitement and euphoria of the expectation.

It's like buying a lottery ticket and planning how you'd spend the £5m. It doesn't mean you think you'll win!

The science and stats don't care why you get excited, just that you do, because statistically you shouldn't. Which is Snowballs point. Your feelings on the day are completely illogical, but most of us do it. Except austistics and manic depressives. Or something.


It's all well and good attacking his statistics on a statistical level, but attacking them on an emotional level is a fools errand.

[Maguire]

Without wanting to go off on too much of a tangent...

That sounds like the stats guy is ignoring the relevance of knowing the benchmark of the person who attained the 1st and having an idea of whether they're as able as them to get a first. The recipients of the 3-4-5 1st's are unknown and so the prospective student can't compare as sensible. Sounds like stats for stats sake!

You're wrong, Hoop Blah. Simple as that.

There are other examples in the book and the effect is well-known by psychologists.


What you are saying is that "I know the guy who got a first X years ago. I reckon I can match him,
so I should IGNORE the fact that University B has awarded FORTY TIMES AS MANY "FIRSTS" (10 x 4)

You can't see the illogicality of that?

You're ARGUMENT itself is a perfect example of the known and proven inference-failure.

It is almost completely irrelevant whether we know the person who got the first at University A.


Think this.

"I'm picking University B because they've awarded 43 Firsts in the last ten years
and University A only awarded 1."

"Very sensible, Maguire. That John Swot was a very lucky/hard-working student."

"John Swot? Oh, I KNOW John Swot. I'm going to go to University A, then..."

"Yes, Swot did well considering he only had one arm."

"John Swot has both arms. I saw him three weeks ago."

"Must be a different John Swot, then, Maguire."

"Oh, in that case, I'm going to University B."


The knowing the guy is IRRELEVANT. It's a FALSE "salience and relevance" issue.

Not sure what you're banging on about but thanks for making me the star

[Snowball]

That was a different Maguire

[Snowball]

Do you want me to express it in binary so there are numbers for you to understand?

I shall treat your posts with all the respect they deserve.

[Hoop Blah]

What your science and stats is failing to recognise is why you get excited. It's not because you expect something to happen but because you want something to happen and actually want the excitement and euphoria of the expectation.

It's like buying a lottery ticket and planning how you'd spend the £5m. It doesn't mean you think you'll win!

The science and stats don't care why you get excited, just that you do, because statistically you shouldn't. Which is Snowballs point. Your feelings on the day are completely illogical, but most of us do it. Except austistics and manic depressives. Or something.


It's all well and good attacking his statistics on a statistical level, but attacking them on an emotional level is a fools errand.

But football is an emotional activity. That's why most of us are there. It's not a logical environment or an experiment in perception of probabilties, it's a sport to watch and get excited about, to join in some tribal behaviour and let off some steam whilst hopefully being entertained.

It's like saying you shouldn't shout 'he's behind you' at a Panto with the kids because logically you know that up on stage they all know he's behind you!

I'm all for applying a bit of science here and there, but it can only be applied with any benefit if it's a suitable subject matter and if you take into account all the factors of that environment. In this case, the majority of people getting excited over a corner are doing so because they enjoy getting excited, not because they think they're going to score.

[ZacNaloen]

You are missing his and my point, if you are going to try an analyse the game you can't analyse it like you watch it because you will make rash judgements e.g. getting excited over corners for no reason. Simple fact of human nature however much you want to deny it.

[Hoop Blah]

What your science and stats is failing to recognise is why you get excited. It's not because you expect something to happen but because you want something to happen and actually want the excitement and euphoria of the expectation.

It's like buying a lottery ticket and planning how you'd spend the £5m. It doesn't mean you think you'll win!

Utterly illogical.

We don't get excited when Fedders is about to take a goal-kick, or a full-back has the ball on the edge of our box
yet we are far more likely to score within 30 seconds of a Fedders kick-out.



No, the reason we get excited is because EMOTIONALLY we believe
we have a "good chance" of a goal, even though, if we paused and
used our brains we'd know that was dumb.

It is a fact that last season we scored 1 in 77 and went about 140 corners without a goal.



Why then, when we fail to win do we sometimes hear, "But we had 18 corners to their 2!"

Corner-count has almost zero relationship to goals from corners

For starters, supporting a football team and getting excited over any of it is pretty illogical. There's no problem in that though, it's kind of what makes it entertaining!

You say we get excited because 'EMOTIONALLY we believe we have a "good chance" of a goal'. Do you have any evidence to support that? All the people I've ever watched a significant number of Reading games with say we're rubbish at corners and never expect us to score. That doesn't stop them joining in with 'come on you Royals' as we line up….I think it's called supporting and getting behind your team, something like that anyway. It's not something they do because they think we're likely to score (although I'm sure there are some within the crowd that do….but it's probably more out of hope than anything else).

As for why people quote corner count as a positive, as in 'But we had 18 corners to their 2' I think you'll find that's because corners is, in many people's eyes, a good proxy for pressure on the oppositions goal. You can't win a corner without have the ball near their goal-line, and if you're close to their goal-line you're making them defend. If they're defending it's because you're in some way threatening to score in their goal

Can you provide the data to back up your stats by the way? You have a history of getting even the basic's wrong so even though I don't disbelieve the 140 corners without a goal, or 1 in 77, it would be interesting to give someone the opportunity to see if it's correct.

[pea]

Do you want me to express it in binary so there are numbers for you to understand?

[Hoop Blah]

You are missing his and my point, if you are going to try an analyse the game you can't analyse it like you watch it because you will make rash judgements e.g. getting excited over corners for no reason. Simple fact of human nature however much you want to deny it.

And you're missing my point, that you can't analyse the game in that way because it ignores the key factors of human involvement and the motivation behind the actions your supposedly analysing.

The assumptions you're making in why people 'get excited' (which in itself is, in my opinion, is actually an incorrect assumption that we chant because we're excited) are seriously flawed.

[ZacNaloen]

And you're missing my point, that you can't analyse the game in that way because it ignores the key factors of human involvement and the motivation behind the actions your supposedly analysing.

WHAT?

Seriously.

I can't stop laughing.

We are saying your memories of the events are clouded by your emotional state at the time. This is a scientific fact, I suggest you read up on it before questioning it. Snowballs hypothesis is that people on this board make rash decisions about certain players, and actions eg inability to score goals as in this thread because of this unreliable recall.

Snowball is making an attempt at objective analysis, your reasoning for rejecting that analysis is spurious at best. Football does not have more variables to analyse than the climate. We still perform a statistical analysis of the weather and predict climate.

The assumptions you're making in why people 'get excited' (which in itself is, in my opinion, is actually an incorrect assumption that we chant because we're excited) are seriously flawed.

This is ridiculous, now you are nitpicking what we mean by excited.

If you are doing anything except sitting in your chair in silence you are getting excited by whats going on.

[Hoop Blah]

Trust me, when I'm making a bit of noise before a corner I'm not getting excited because I think we're going to score. It's because I enjoy the act of supporting the team.

You seem to be failing to absorb that bit of the argument.

My memory isn't being clouded and kidding me into thinking we're got a good (or improved) chanceof scoring (although I have no doubt that is a proven fact, it's pretty obvious for starters) but it's not my recall of corner conversion rate that's causing me to make noise and 'get excited'.

[ZacNaloen]

You are still missing the point. This is a waste of my time.

[Maguire]

That was a different Maguire

I hate that guy