I truely don't understand how people ragged on Del Rio's decision to kneel at the 1. I mean you **** up that kick ~ 1% of the time. Does your opponent come back and score a TD with 1:50 left or whatever more then 1% of the time? **** yes you ****ing stupid mother ****er.

"BUT YOU WERE LOSING THE GAME" just plz die

does it seem like consensus of the media and public at large is slowly changing on this?

What does this even mean? The main thing that you can do with the increased information is speed up your tempo, maybe onside kick if you know you need two more scores rather than try and force a defensive stop, stuff like that which is 100% under the control of the offense. What can the defense do, play more or less of a prevent defense?

This was the e-mail I just sent him. Sound good? Any holes?

When you punt, you "risk" losing the game 99% of the time. In other words, you will only win the game on the actual punt about 1% of the time (i'm factoring in here fumbles or some other wacky play). When you go for it, you only risk losing the game 40% of the time. The other 60% of the time you win the game. In other words, at the end of those two actual plays (not taking into account further plays yet), when you punted, 99% of the time your in a position where you can lose the game. When you went for it, 40% of the time you are in a position that you will lose the game.

Now, factoring in what happens after each individual play, you ACTUALLY lose the game 30% of the time when you punt and you ACTUALLY lose the game 21% of the time when you go for it . So, the risk is greater when you punt.

wat?

The method I have seen is to use dynamic programming to start with 1 possession remaining, then work backwards - all the way to say 20 possession remaining. Then that gives you the 2 pt conversion chart.

The trailing team can only speed up their tempo so much. If they're down its assumed they're going at the fastest pace they can realistically use.

When the leading team has the ball they've got 2 choices:
1)conservatively run the ball and take a guaranteed amount of time off the clock
2) take the chance of passing for a first down while risking potential incomplete passes that will stop the clock.

The change in the actions of the leading team are going to change more than the actions of the trailing team.

Above all, though, the essence of Mr. Belichick's "crime" may be something simpler than all this: His decision went against the natural instincts of all human beings when they're forced to make high-stakes decisions. In a recent study, researchers from Duke and UCLA found that when faced with a decision involving risk, people have an overwhelming tendency to make the supposedly safe choice—to err on the side of caution—even though doing so may lead to worse results.

By studying thousands of hands of blackjack played by random people, the researchers found that when they strayed from the "book" or the optimal strategy, those players who did something aggressive were more successful than those who did something passive.

In fact, the subjects made four times as many passive mistakes as they did aggressive ones. And these passive mistakes—holding on a 16 when the dealer has a king showing, for example—were more costly: They cost $2 for every $1 won, versus $1.50 for every $1 won on aggressive mistakes.

Why do people embrace caution? "It's because of the regret that people face when they take an action and it doesn't turn out well for them," says Bruce Carlin of UCLA's Anderson School of Management, who worked on the study.

At issue, it seems, is the very idea of what constitutes gambling. If going for it gave the Patriots a statistically better chance of winning—and if aggressive deviations are often better than passive ones—then the gamble would have been to punt, even though that was the seemingly safe play.


I guess that just comes down to the person. Are you the type of person that would do something you know to be statistically better, but is scarier, if everything is on the line?

Let's put it this way. Everyone that knows how to play blackjack knows you hit 16 when the dealer is showing a 10. Everyone that knows how to play blackjack hits in that situation when they have a $10 bet on the table. The question is, would they do it when they have a $10,000 bet on the table because, while it obviously gives you the best chance of winning, it's still scary as heck to do.

I already acknowledged this. At the same time, don't forget that 2+2 books are also somewhat dumbed down and while bookishness is correlated with intelligence, the strength of this correlation is somewhat overstated. Intelligence and wisdom are also correlated with having less time to spend time posting on internet forums. On the whole, I'm definitely impressed by the intellect and wisdom of several posters on this site, but there are a lot of posters here, so that should be expected even given a random sample. There are a lot of wise and intelligent people in this world, even though we can't always appreciate what they have to offer. Furthermore, possession of certain types of wisdom tends to restrain people from sharing that wisdom with others, so there's a slight tendency for any communication medium to be flooded with certain forms of anti-wisdom.


Do you consider yourself much smarter than those people? Are there ever moments when you're being incredibly dumb?


When you say "logic" what do you mean? Most of you seem to use the term logic to refer to rhetoric employed by your side in a way that aligns closely with your emotional inclination that is indistinguishable from correct reasoning. Of course this sort of rhetoric has no actual correspondence to real logic - the rigorous, mathematical kind that is demonstrably correct. Each time the rigor of their "logic" is questioned, they argue that such rigor is not necessary.


This is a very strange perception of what I write there. My general way of thinking about politics is somewhat unacceptable in contemporary America (those who understand it probably feel that communicating it to others is either too difficult or futile, which is fine since they are apolitical). I happen to apply the process mainly to anarcho-capitalism to show that some of your beliefs are incompatible with moral rejection of the status quo.

On the contrary, your approach to politics is nearly the same as that of the average American interested in politics, only you lack the anchors that bring your beliefs close to the mainstream. There's something wrong with this world (read: you don't like something in your life), it's someone else's fault (read: not your fault), this someone or something can theoretically be removed (read: your moral outrage is justfied and serves a purpose) after which the world would be better (read: you want to think that your beliefs are about positive things). This "blame the mainstream" attitude is a prominent aspect of the mainstream politics itself.


It doesn't matter what line they are using. People like to see experts fail. Politics forum posters who think they are smarter than economists, scientists or politicians, also appeal strongly to conventional wisdom and rhetoric (freedom, rights, indebtedness, market, voluntary, violence, theft, resource surplus, etc) to justify their position. Whatever aspect of conventional wisdom appears to support their beliefs is never questioned.


It's natural to shun anyone who is different from themselves. This is why people refuse to accept expert opinion. There's no reason to bring "conventional wisdom" into this - people don't like it when their judgment or intuition is challenged by others. It's just that the average person's intuition is what we call conventional wisdom. And they can be louder when their bias is confirmed by others. It's people's refusal to consider the possibility that others, such as experts, may have thought more about the problem and arrived at an answer contrary to their natural inclination, that leads to this reaction.

This is classical epistemological arrogance - people thinking that they know what's right, when they have no reason to do so. This is true of politics forum posters who think their intuition and logic guided to the "correct" solution, true of casual fans who think they can tell when those coaches are wrong and true of people here, etc. Despite all objective evidence to the contrary, people cling to this belief in their own personal superiority largely for reasons of emotional comfort.

Which reminds me of Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's First Law:

When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion -- the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.


I'm disappointed by the lack of humor in this attempt. Either way, luckboxing is irrelevant here. If you take a group of homeless people and a group of successful businessmen, the latter would have on average been luckier than the former. They would also perform better at nearly any test of cognitive ability.

Furthermore, most of the "luckboxing" in business involves being given opportunities to learn and develop important skills, which are now part of who they are. It doesn't matter if you became smart through hard work, genetics or lucky circumstances. This isn't to say that some people can't get rich without developing advanced cognitive abilities, but this is rarer than commonly supposed.

And no, owners would rather that coaches execute perfectly. They'd also want perfect athletic specimen with perfect football skills who are also model citizens at every position. It turns out that you can't have everything in life and you prioritize accordingly.


Most people's minds work in such a way that the part of their mind that understands math is largely disconnected from the part of their mind that evalutes decisions. In a more analytical sense, I'd say that most people subconsciously perceive the impact of a failure to be greater than the impact on the probability of winning the game itself. This is generally true in real life under most circumstances. If the company you own fails in some way, it may not just affect the bottom line - you may lose key employees, lower morale, lose reputation, social status, affect your marriage, relationships with kids, etc. Because risk in a social or business setting is such a nebulous and dangerous thing that needs to be managed delicately, it's hard for people to imagine that in some cases like a football in-game situation, there's a strong basis for strict quantification and its ignorance can lead to subpar decisions.


This is a key point. The numbers have to be quite clearly against Belichick's decision for this to be a genuine controversy.


Furthermore "slow and steady" is a very good heuristic for humans because so much in life requires persistence over a long period of time - taking little risk at each step allows one to fully commit to the endeavor and mentally prepare for further steps without having to deal with the anxiety of immediate failure, which diverts mental energy from the endeavor. Regret avoidance is also important because a lot of resources are spent second-guessing yourself and others. This sort of morale management, both at the personal level and at the team level is intuitive enough for many people to extend it to situations that aren't necessarily analogous. Like manufacturing a run in baseball. Leaving a poker table after reaching a predetermined goal. Most people's grasp of math isn't nearly good enough for them to correctly apply mathematical principles to override their intuition - and let's face it, we only notice other people's failures in this regard, not our own. Furthermore, it's common for people who abandon well-accepted heuristics to pick up even worse heuristics, because what causes us to abandon them isn't mathematics, but rather our impatience and other vices.

It's wrong to do it if your bankroll isn't so large that $10,000 isn't a scary amount of money for you.

Can you guys imagine what it would be like if it wasn't Belichick that was involved?

Like, say Jim Zorn or Eric Mangini(with hypothetical 60% conversion offenses) did this, can you imagine the media backlash? Especially considering half the people defending the play are doing it only from the standpoint of OMGZ YOU CANT QUESTION BB, like Gruden last night.

It would be a bloodbath.

Well if you already have 10k in the circle, the casino isn't letting you cancel the hand, so bankroll considerations are already out the window. Football is already like that, you've already committed to playing the game, so now figure out how best you can win it.

Triple negative imo

Yea, my bad. You're right. But if you don't have the roll, you shouldn't be taking the bet in the first place, even if it is +ev.

So I agree if the decision is earlier, but once you get to like 4 minutes left, the odds of a safety are extremely unlikely, and the most important decision is whether to onside kick (needing two scores) or to kick deep (needing 1 score).

jesus christ phone booth, learn the 5 sentence post imo.

good stuff, although they use the espn article probabilities instead of advancednflstats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjOHJHTKSOQ

the tide is turning. a lot has changed since 1995. we won't have to wait another 14 years

FO comes around, as expected

too late

Lapoker,
FWIW that was written yesterday on a piece they did for ESPN insider. However the article was absurd it was basically "There are a lot of variables it might be good it might be bad, but we aren't going to do real analysis to figure it out"

they talked some at mnf halftime. tom jackson doesn't believe in not scoring a td when you have the chance. he feels the same way about letting a team score

Which is insane because there are obvious situations where it is clearly better to have the other team score (where your win percentage is > 0%) than to stop them (where your win % becomes 0).

Players are probably the worst people to ask about these things. They are almost conditioned not to think logically or strategically about the game.

Wizenhunt agreed with the call.

but silly wizenhunt didn't go for it on 4th and 2 in his own game near midfield with the score tied IIRC