Backup center discussion

[GMScud]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

You, sir, are a subscriber to the gambler's fallacy. Out of respect for all things Warpath, I refuse to down THAT road again. But I will ask you this:

If you flip a coin and it lands on heads, what is the likelihood that it will land on heads on the NEXT flip?

If you answered anything other than 50%, you'd be wrong.

The fact that an event just occurred does nothing to change the probability of it occurring in the future.

You're right in saying that the probability of having two injury-ravaged seasons in a row is much lower than having one. But that's not the issue: the issue is will this ONE season coming up in 2008 be injury-ravaged? We're not looking at two at the same time, we're looking at one season. We're looking at the NEXT coin flip. What happened last season has no bearing, the odds remain the same.

The law of averages states that things even out. This does tend to be true, but only over TIME with large enough samples. Meaning if you look at the Skins over the next 30 seasons or so, we'll approach the average number of games missed. But we're talking about one season, about one coin flip. The odds remain the same.

The fact that we got so injured last year does not help us, nor does it hurt us, going into this season.

That's really all I was trying to say all along. And like I said, if we have an "average" injury season, it will be far less than last season. Maybe '07 was evening out how healthy we stayed in '05 when we won 11 games (including playoffs). I wasn't trying to imply we'd be injury-free in '08 because of '07. But the Law of Averages is in our favor in the health department compared to last season.

As far as the gambler's fallacy, I guess it's a good thing I don't bet. I understand what you mean as far as probabilities are concerned. I'm not trying to take the Warpath down a road of flawed logic or anything. Trust me, I'm not that complicated.