When it comes to FPL team management, are you in the words
of Stevie Wonder "very superstitious"?
Very
superstitious, writing's on the wall,
Very superstitious, ladders 'bout to fall..
Very superstitious, ladders 'bout to fall..
It seems to me that a sizeable majority of active FPL managers are prone to irrational thought processes tantamount to superstition. Now, if superstition is just your way of adding to your enjoyment
of the game, then that's fine and dandy. Good
for you. I'm not here to rain on your parade. If you take your overall rank or mini-league standings seriously, however, then the more aware you can become about illogical reasoning and weak argumentation the better.
Don't get me wrong, we are all susceptible to making flawed assumptions and jumping to over-generalised conclusions, but some of the misuse of statistics I see from high profile FPL managers to support their decision-making is laughably ludicrous. For instance, imagine if in summarising why I was nominating Wijnaldum as my captain pick for GW13 I concluded by stating the following:
Finally,
another novel reason which validates Wijnaldum as captain is based on an
interesting fact that I discovered through Astrology. He's a water sign which
appears to be the most optimum sign for dream players of the week, as follows:
Fire (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) 25.00%
Water (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) 41.67%
Air (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) 08.33%
Earth (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) 25.00%
How seriously would YOU take such an explanation? And yet, this is no different to the fuzzy logic and woolly thinking put forward by a prominent pundit last gameweek. He's not alone though. Far from it. I see countless examples by other leading lights every gameweek and it frustrates me enormously the significance that is routinely attached to ridiculously small sample sizes. Remember, the law of large numbers tells us that flicking a coin a thousand times is much more likely to result in heads nearer half the time than if we repeat the experiment with just ten coin tosses.
Obviously, if you measure the frequency of four arbitrary factors, you shouldn't be too surprised if there are differences in how they score. To then make inferences based on the results though is just the stuff of whimsey. Granted, these perpetrators of statistical crimes can be forgiven for trying to make the often repetitive and tedious nature of FPL articles more interesting to read.
At the outset of this season, I was assured by the FPL community on more than one occasion that I was making a big mistake starting without any Chelsea players in my team, because historically they ALWAYS started strongly. That's the thing with statistics though, they're only true until they're not; they tell us what has happened in the past, not what will happen in the future.
It isn't just the FPL prophets who are guilty of this either. Their disciples are just as often willing accomplices to this type of groupthink. Take captaincy picks based on the record of a particular player against a particular team. Many of you will easily remember the times such thinking came off, such as Rooney's lucky assist vs Spurs on the opening day of the current season, or likewise, Oscar's fortunate goal vs Swansea perhaps? Less will readily recall the times these coincidences didn't pay off. In poker, this is called results oriented thinking. How about Rooney vs Aston Villa this season, the team he has scored more goals against than any other? He blanked.
Think about it like this - if every team consisted of eleven cloned Oscars, would you expect the score of every match to be the same? Of course not! Why? Because of all the countless pivotal moments and numerous turning points that comprise the beautiful game. And most of the Oscars would have a team that they score more against than any other. I guess what I'm trying to say is that such coincidences are inevitable.
That all said, it is easy to understand why we make these mistakes over and over again, as researchers have repeatedly shown how vulnerable to confirmation bias we all are. As a consequence, we readily accept the stats that support our beliefs, but dismiss those that contradict them. Furthermore, our brains are lousy at correctly calculating probability. Try this problem for example if you haven't come across it before:
Obviously, if you measure the frequency of four arbitrary factors, you shouldn't be too surprised if there are differences in how they score. To then make inferences based on the results though is just the stuff of whimsey. Granted, these perpetrators of statistical crimes can be forgiven for trying to make the often repetitive and tedious nature of FPL articles more interesting to read.
At the outset of this season, I was assured by the FPL community on more than one occasion that I was making a big mistake starting without any Chelsea players in my team, because historically they ALWAYS started strongly. That's the thing with statistics though, they're only true until they're not; they tell us what has happened in the past, not what will happen in the future.
It isn't just the FPL prophets who are guilty of this either. Their disciples are just as often willing accomplices to this type of groupthink. Take captaincy picks based on the record of a particular player against a particular team. Many of you will easily remember the times such thinking came off, such as Rooney's lucky assist vs Spurs on the opening day of the current season, or likewise, Oscar's fortunate goal vs Swansea perhaps? Less will readily recall the times these coincidences didn't pay off. In poker, this is called results oriented thinking. How about Rooney vs Aston Villa this season, the team he has scored more goals against than any other? He blanked.
Think about it like this - if every team consisted of eleven cloned Oscars, would you expect the score of every match to be the same? Of course not! Why? Because of all the countless pivotal moments and numerous turning points that comprise the beautiful game. And most of the Oscars would have a team that they score more against than any other. I guess what I'm trying to say is that such coincidences are inevitable.
That all said, it is easy to understand why we make these mistakes over and over again, as researchers have repeatedly shown how vulnerable to confirmation bias we all are. As a consequence, we readily accept the stats that support our beliefs, but dismiss those that contradict them. Furthermore, our brains are lousy at correctly calculating probability. Try this problem for example if you haven't come across it before:
How many randomly chosen FPL managers do you think there would need to be in a mini-league for the chances of two of them sharing a birthday to be more likely than not? *
These tendencies and many other unhelpful ones besides ('gamblers fallacy', 'primacy effect', 'recency effect', etc.) are often hardwired into our brains, and thus, difficult to eradicate, but I want to argue that we should try to be more honest with ourselves when applying stats to our FPL justifications. Otherwise, we are doomed to the fate Stevie Wonder warned us about:
When
you believe in things that you don't understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain't the way
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain't the way
*The chances are that, even when I tell you the answer to the birthday problem above, your brain will refuse to accept it! Believe it or not, but the answer is 23. Most people start instinctively by halving 365 days and revise downwards from around 180. From personal experience, I can report that betting someone you'll find at least 2 people from 30 random strangers in a pub who share a birthday is both a fun and profitable game to play next time you're out with your (preferably gullible) friends! ;o)
