Statistics Question

If you could do that successfully, you could make some decent money. There are so many factors that go into a teams performance (injury, draft, schedule, match-ups vs. opponents to name a few). What sport and what statistics do you have? With so few players on the court, basketball fortunes can change drastically via injury or draft. In the NFL, a last place team has a slightly easier schedule (three games) than a first place team (previous year's results) in the same division.

Good luck...

hi markr it's actually Rugby stats...I just wanted to see what possible information one could get from end of season team stats...and how they may perform next season....what other information I could get from those stats and best ways of presenting it

You are trying to use science and math where it cannot be applied. Human behavior, especially a group or team's is not a scientific certainty. There's no reliable way of making such a statistical prediction. If anyone could do so, they'd become the richest person on earth.

Athletic injuries and the athletes physical conditioning (rate of physical aging) is/are an unpredictable variable. Then there's the issue of psychological motivation of groups of individuals and coaching. It would be easier to predict the world's weather than attempt to predict team play at the beginning of season.

Now if you had a team of robots, there might be a chance to make some sort of statement because robots theoretically do the same thing in the same way every time. Human variability and the complexities of team play is not a science. If one key player is having a good game or good season it might trigger or inspire another player to excell.

Some players play well under pressure, some play poorly. Also, some coaches uses better strategies and some are poor strategists. More uncontrollable variables throw predictability out the window. Then, in turn, that behavior may snowball into the team having a winning streak. Streaks (whether they be winning or losing) are not something that can be predicted nor planned for.

BTW, re American NFL football team performances, each week there are stats called Power Rankings. These are unscientific ratings based on what journalists think of the performance of these teams based on their game-to-game performance against the competition (weak or strong) they face. It's not a very useful collection of statistics, either.

Also, another issue is that a sport team at the end of one season is/are not necessarily the same team that starts the next season due to trades and injuries. Team chemistry is one issue that cannot be fit into a probability statistic.