[WWI] 1 rb paper critique

[iban]

Shane Weier wrote:
> *I* said
>
>> I have a sneaking suspicion that we're talking at cross purposes 
>> here. the original article proposed that MvR was merely a statictical 
>> outrider - that one in a thousand data point way outside the Bell 
>> curve, whose existence can be prediced by statisitics. IOW, *someone* 
>> was bound to be lucky enough to survive that long.
>
> Mmm. Having gone back through the entire thread, I'm wrong here. The 
> confusion is more between the actual paper and the magazine article.

yep.  there is a secondary thread of interest that can be extracted from 
those same stats, tho, regarding how much of an ace's score can be 
attributed to skill, and how much to luck.  again, nobody is saying it's 
all luck. 

nor does anyone seriously think (including mvr himself) that it's all 
skill. 

what's interesting, however, is that one can now begin to narrow in on a 
percentage range of any aces' score and say statistically, something 
within this percentage range was probably due more to luck than to skill.

but that's a whole other can of worms, and we haven't properly opened 
the first one yet!

iban