I have heard all about Grantland

I'm reading interesting book called Talk Nerdy to Me. This is by the ultra-hip Grantland (as in Grantland Rice) crew whose totally cool cat's sportswriting on the web packaged here bears the blistering subtitle of "Talk Nerdy to Me: Grantland's Guide to the Advanced Analytics Revolution" (sold out says the site today) and it is a more interesting take on big data analytics then many other tomes that you maybe have anted up for. Let's start with "Belichick's Fourth and Reckless" by contributor Bill Simmons. The story centers at times maniacally but on Patriots coach Bill Belichick's famously strange call on fourth-and-2 on November 15, 2009 against Peyton Manning and the Baltimore Colts. It trumps many other coaching failures in Boston sports  fabled history of failures, he writes. It was such a strange call – the Pats were on their own 28, with less than 2 minutes to play and a lead - that people began to look at the statistics trying to see what was in the coaches – the great, mind you - mind. Simmons goes over some of the stats and pretty well proves how at times statistics can lie, or at least outsmart the lazy intellectual (you know the type that works for media!)Bellichick's crazy gambit had backing in stats. "Bellichick did play the percentages if you took those percantages at face value." But Simmons points out for example, that statistics (that going for fourth down had an 80.5 % chance of succeeding) don’t account for the obvious confused funk that had descended on the Pat's in that final quarter.  That there is a big difference between fourth-and-2 on a Sunday in September against a lazed Falcons outfit than there is in November against Petyon Bloody Manning and the Colts. Stop and grok on this:

"I know it's fun to think stats can settle everything, but they can't and they don’t."

If you are playing the statistics card, which one do you choose? Writes Simmons. There are all sorts of statistics to count, but which are the ones to count on? Pulling out all the stop here I am going to recall Mark Twain, or maybe Vin Scully, plenty of argue over who said it:

Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

Beware, you would be masters of the big data universe! I said that. - Jack Vaughan