[NU Sports] Q2: Columbus

[Michael Vance]

At 11/12/2005 01:38 PM, SjT \(Stephen J. Truog\) wrote:
>- Great stat by ABC of the replay reversals ... hmm
>40% in the Big Ten to lead the BCS leagues. Guess
>JoePa and Lloyd Carr were right all those years about
>conference refs just plain ole' getting it wrong.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

The stat is meaningless without knowing how many plays (or actually what 
percentage of plays) are selected for review.  If 5% of plays in the Big 
Ten get reviewed and of those 40% get overturned, that's 2% of total plays 
getting overturned.  But if 10% of plays in the SEC are getting reviewed (I 
doubt that's true; I'm just using nice round numbers to make the math easy 
and illustrate the point) and of those 23% are getting overturned, that's a 
2.3% rate of overturn.

I'm not arguing for or against Big Ten officials.  I'm just pointing out 
that the number that they showed does not present the complete picture.

-Michael