Statistically Winning Strategy

[BrianR]

I spent a bit of time this afternoon looking at match results, and decided to have a little fun with Excel to see if I could tease anything out of the data. What I found surprised me, and I thought it would be good to share with everyone else.

What I found was that the number of teams that scored over 30 points and lost was very low. In fact, 98.515% of all losing teams had fewer than 30 points. This would seem to indicate that anyone who can score over 30 points (a 12" ramp) every match, without penalties, should be well on their way to finals, if not one of the top seeds, WITHOUT EVER SCORING A SINGLE TUBE.

The different regionals did produce some varied data, notably VCU where 99.898% of losing teams had less than 30 points, and St Louis where 99.92% of losing teams had less than 30 points, and on the opposite end, Pacific Northwest, where 92.53% of losing teams had less than 30 points. Regardless, out of ten or eleven matches, this means you would win ALL BUT ONE. That is a very impressive record, and will easily earn a spot in the finals.

I wouldn't advocate jumping up on a ramp right at the start of the match and saying "This is a statistically sound strategy", because you would give your opponents free reign to fill the rack. But I would say that getting up a ramp should be a priority, and I personally am planning on taking a full 30 seconds for this so that I make sure we have enough time to pick up these essential points.

What does everyone think about this?


Oh yeah, this data constitutes 270 qualification matches, and none of the finals matches, as those are clearly a different caliber, and need to treated as a seperate type of match so as to prevent skewing the data. I have attached my Excel spreadsheet if you want to look through it.