In the just plain weird department – St. Olaf and Augsburg tied twice this past weekend. That’s kind of unusual, but not unprecedented. But these were the seventh and eighth consecutive ties between the two schools, dating back over the last four seasons!
Is there a stat geek that can help me compute the odds on this? Looking over the past few seasons, it looks like the average team has two ties per year, so the odds of a tie for a team are 2/25 or around 8% in any given game. That means (I think) that the odds of eight consecutive ties against the same team are something like .08 to the eighth power or 0.0000001678%. Actually, I think that’s the odds of eight ties in a row, period. Wouldn’t it be even astronomically less to compute it against the same team, which you only face twice per year? Shouldn’t it be therefore be 0.0000001678% squared (since the odds of a tie and the odds of meeting a team in the same season are coincidentally the same)? That’s a 0.00000000000000028147% chance.
Of course, I get confused computing the RPI and PWR, so I may have this all wrong. But one thing I am sure of – it’s freaking amazing.
Anybody want to lend an opinion?
