Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 333 Location: Near Philadelphia, PA
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 3:27 pm Post subject: Power of Context
There is this great book that was recommended to me by a friend in sports management. It's called the Tipping Point. Lots I could talk about in it, but I thought I'd highlight one of the basketball references:
Quote:
The mistake we make in thinking of character as something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information. Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy way of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of the situation and context. We will always reach for a "dispositional" explanation for events, as opposed to a contextual explanation. In one experiment, for instance, a group of people are told to watch two sets of similarly talented basketball players, the first of whom are shooting baskets in a well-lighted gym and the second of whom are shooting baskets in a badly lighted gym (and obviously missing a lot of shots). Then they are asked to judge how good the players were. The players in the well-lighted gym were considered superior.
(emphasis is mine)
I found that experiment amazing. Sheesh. My god, I'd probably do the same thing even though I know how light affects my shooting.
The power of context is very big, which is why I say often in BoP to evaluate the team first, individual second. But it is easy, very easy to forget how teammates (context) affect individual performance. I never really thought that psychologists already know how easy we can be fooled to forgetting that. Anyway, this is a different subject, but I thought it an interesting point worthy of raising here.
ps -- it's a really interesting book. _________________ Dean Oliver
Consultant to the Seattle Supersonics
Author, Basketball on Paper
http://www.basketballonpaper.com
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 409 Location: Washington, DC
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 3:57 pm Post subject:
Great post, Dean. In some ways, it seems an obvious point -- that part of evaluation should include considering the context. In practice, though... _________________ If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Frank, Mark G., and Gilovich, Thomas, "The Dark Side of Self- and Social Perception: Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1988, 54:1:74-85
The authours found that black uniforms and aggression were linked in the minds of their subjects, and that football teams whose uniforms were black were called for more penalties than expected. I wonder to what extent this applies in basketball.
Further discussion can be found here. _________________ ed
The same guy wrote "Blink" which is also a pretty good read... _________________ Statistics are like a woman's bikini. What it reveals can be fascinating, but what it conceals is ultimately critical!
Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 344 Location: cleveland, ohio
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 5:16 pm Post subject:
well then it's plainly obvious why shooting percentages were lower in the NBA in the 1950s and early 1960s - everyone knows those gyms/arenas had poorer lighting
I came across this today at the Management of Baseball blog. It's not precisely what we're talking about here, but something similar and interesting nonetheless.
The discussion is of a Bill James essay in the new SABR research journal about "the fog" and how analysts have considered randomness in a statistic to be proof it is not a skill, when it is not sufficient evidence of that.
Quote:
We ran astray because we have been assuming that random data is proof of nothingness, when in reality random data proves nothing. In essence, starting with Dick Cramer's article, Cramer argued that "I did an analysis which should have identified clutch hitters, if clutch hitting exists. I got random data; therefore, clutch hitters don't exist.
The best basketball application might be plus-minus data; while the noise inherent in plus-minus is good reason to take it with an enormous grain of salt, it isn't reason to dismiss it.
Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Cambridge, MA
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:00 pm Post subject:
Dean,
I think for a shining example of the importance of context, and how teammates affect individual performance we need to look no further than Chris Webber's ugly 10 games with Philly so far (particularly his 5 point effort last night).
Webber was by no means the model of efficiency while in Sacramento, but he was very productive accross the board. Not only is he affected by having new teammates, but also by having a new coach who may not know how to, or be willing to call plays that optimize his talents.
Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 333 Location: Near Philadelphia, PA
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:19 pm Post subject:
admin wrote:
I came across this today at the Management of Baseball blog. It's not precisely what we're talking about here, but something similar and interesting nonetheless.
The discussion is of a Bill James essay in the new SABR research journal about "the fog" and how analysts have considered randomness in a statistic to be proof it is not a skill, when it is not sufficient evidence of that.
Quote:
We ran astray because we have been assuming that random data is proof of nothingness, when in reality random data proves nothing. In essence, starting with Dick Cramer's article, Cramer argued that "I did an analysis which should have identified clutch hitters, if clutch hitting exists. I got random data; therefore, clutch hitters don't exist.
The best basketball application might be plus-minus data; while the noise inherent in plus-minus is good reason to take it with an enormous grain of salt, it isn't reason to dismiss it.
This is absolutely correct. Absence of statistically significant results only means that evidence in the form you were looking doesn't exist. Ruling out all evidence requires an infinite number of null results (or probably just a lot). Similarly, I think there is a lot of value in the people who know when to take an 85% significant result as the truth -- through incorporating some sort of instinctive knowledge of what wasn't in the study. And equally likewise, knowing when a supposedly significant result is not answering the question you want is useful. My formal stat training didn't include a lot of high end courses, but I learned the lies and truths told by stats early on. _________________ Dean Oliver
Consultant to the Seattle Supersonics
Author, Basketball on Paper
http://www.basketballonpaper.com
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