andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-253 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I just happened to notice this from last year. Eric Loken writes : Steven Pinker reviewed Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book and criticized him rather harshly for several shortcomings. Gladwell appears to have made things worse for himself in a letter to the editor of the NYT by defending a manifestly weak claim from one of his essays – the claim that NFL quarterback performance is unrelated to the order they were drafted out of college. The reason w [Loken and his colleagues] are implicated is that Pinker identified an earlier blog post of ours as one of three sources he used to challenge Gladwell (yay us!). But Gladwell either misrepresented or misunderstood our post in his response, and admonishes Pinker by saying “we should agree that our differences owe less to what can be found in the scientific literature than they do to what can be found on Google.” Well, here’s what you can find on Google. Follow this link to request the data for NFL quarterbacks drafted between 1980 and
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1 Gladwell appears to have made things worse for himself in a letter to the editor of the NYT by defending a manifestly weak claim from one of his essays – the claim that NFL quarterback performance is unrelated to the order they were drafted out of college. [sent-3, score-0.46]
2 Follow this link to request the data for NFL quarterbacks drafted between 1980 and 2006. [sent-8, score-0.285]
3 Paste the data into a spreadsheet and make a simple graph of touchdowns thrown (as of 2008) versus order of selection in the draft to create the picture below. [sent-9, score-0.913]
4 The graph includes 373 QBs with a correlation of -. [sent-10, score-0.25]
5 If you take the log of TDs the correlation increases to -. [sent-12, score-0.168]
6 But correlation can be misleading here because the data are heavily skewed and stacked at zero. [sent-14, score-0.28]
7 What is the probability that a quarterback throws 50 or more touchdowns if picked early in the draft? [sent-16, score-0.599]
8 Is the probability lower for QBs picked later in the draft? [sent-17, score-0.23]
9 If you were going to predict performance, would you want to know the draft position of the QB before you made your prediction? [sent-18, score-0.533]
10 You can eliminate some of the data by declaring it off limits. [sent-21, score-0.153]
11 He also looks at per-play statistics, like touchdowns per game, to counter what he considers an opportunity bias. [sent-25, score-0.338]
12 Because early draft picks are given more opportunity to play, there is a natural correlation between draft order and playing time which might inflate the career statistics like total touchdowns. [sent-26, score-1.681]
13 To attribute all the covariance between playing time and draft order as some sort of opportunity bias is to dramatically redefine the logic of the question. [sent-29, score-0.962]
14 Does anyone believe that NFL owners and coaches are just “socially promoting” their early draft picks to run up these gaudy production stats, while equally able QBs with the misfortune of being selected later in the draft sit idly by and watch? [sent-30, score-1.261]
15 Yes,there are Tom Bradys sitting on the bench… but very very few quarterbacks picked 199th in the draft are remotely as good as Brady proved to be, whereas several QBs picked in the early rounds are as good. [sent-31, score-1.153]
16 You can’t look at the above graph and not agree that there is some association between draft order and probability of being a high producer. [sent-32, score-0.81]
17 The correlation is still there when I do TDs per game. [sent-35, score-0.24]
18 The correlation is even bigger when I do TD per game for QBs picked in the first 100 positions of the draft. [sent-37, score-0.473]
19 I can’t get the association to go away, and I’m going to let these graphs stand as a challenge to Gladwell’s statement that no prediction is possible regarding the future success of NFL quarterbacks. [sent-38, score-0.176]
20 The consensus of the predictive information reflected in draft order out of college unambiguously does predict future performance. [sent-39, score-0.67]
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Introduction: Dave Berri writes: Saw you had a post on the research I did with Rob Simmons on the NFL draft. I have attached the article. This article has not officially been published, so please don’t post this on-line. The post you linked to states the following: “On his blog, Berri says he restricts the analysis to QBs who have played more than 500 downs, or for 5 years. He also looks at per-play statistics, like touchdowns per game, to counter what he considers an opportunity bias.” Two points: First of all, we did not look at touchdowns per game (that is not a per play stat). More importantly — as this post indicates — we did far more than just look at data after five years. We did mention the five year result, but directly below that discussion (and I mean, directly below), the following sentences appear. Our data set runs from 1970 to 2007 (adjustments were made for how performance changed over time). We also looked at career performance after 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 years
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