Jordysghost wrote:Trends rise and fall on a week to week basis in the NFL...
And on a season-to-season basis, too. Thus your demand that nothing means anything until your opponent can pile up somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 games' worth of analysis (oh, and even that's probably no good because "your assessments probably weren't measured objectively'—the pot-kettle-black factor here is overwhelming) is arbitrary nonsense you're concocting for purposes that have nothing to do with separating fact from fiction.
The point of collecting a sufficient quantity of data is to
reduce the likelihood that the effect being observed is actually mere statistical noise. That has nothing to do with "trends" that "rise and fall"—which, as I just noted, is a truism about
any phenomenon across
any time span. Your "sample size too small!" argument has no actual connection to any particular quantity, so it works just as well to discount 500 games of data as it does 50. A partisan bound and determined to deny the reality staring him right in the face can always deny that it's real and claim it's necessary to wait for more data to come in—and that's what you're doing.
until you look back on it throughout the entirety of the season (an entire sample size), you dont know how long or how far a trend or pattern will go
What is it about a
season that has some kind of mystical sample-size value? Plenty of (be still my beating heart)
trends only last for a season or two. Maybe officials will totally refuse to call
any penalties on visiting teams to Lambeau during the 2016 season; who knows?
In the real world, calling something a "trend" doesn't actually demonstrate that (1) it's not real or (2) it's just statistical noise.
if the Packers were to have a sharp decline in free plays that werent blown down, would that not change the current trend or pattern?
Uh, sure. But by that logic, it is flatly impossible to prove that
any "trend" whatsoever is real.
Everything is subject to a "sharp decline." Your argument is absurd sophistry.