A University of Mississippi report show there are around 15-18 million people playing fantasy sports - with many of them with a bachelors degree and a member of the "professional" work force.
Given the astounding stat, one would imagine much thought has been placed in winning fantasy football. Surprisingly I find people don't really understand the numbers. Most people and most sites, such as Yahoo, talk about players points in terms of averages. The first definition of average according to Webster dictionary is: 1 a : a single value (as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values Interesting to note are the words in parenthesis - mean,mode,or median.
What you will find the most common and most likely form of discussion of average is the arithmetic mean version. When people say average, they really mean the arithmetic mean. Example of this is sample of 2,15,20,60,60 the arithmetic mean is (2+15+20+60+60)/5=31.4. The mode is the most common occurring number in this case it would be 60. And finally, the median is the absolute middle of the sample string of numbers ordered from high to low in this case 20. The median is a little hard to explain so another example of median lets say the sample was only 4 numbers 2,15,20,60 - in this case the median is 17.5 - its exactly between 15 and 20.
Now that you understand the various "averages" - lets answer why the median makes more sense than the average (arithmetic mean) for Fantasy Football. Typically, fantasy football is about winning a single head to head game - meaning your players points combined versus another persons players points combined. After the real football games are done, points are tallied up and whoever has the most points win. You then get a win or loss. The next week you play again typically with someone else and you get a win or loss again. Eventually you have a whole season of wins and losses. Once you understand that you should understand it doesn’t matter how many points you score each week as long as you beat your opponent. Yes, it does matter to break ties but as long as you win every week, you won’t have that problem. Therefore, the key is to get players who are consistent. It really does no good to get a player who is hot one week and then not the other week unless you can predict that which is unlikely. These players will typically have a very good average. Alternatively, if you look at the MEDIAN you can spot a more consistent player over a streaky player.
To conclude, the examination of the median may give you the edge over the other fantasy football players.
David Bellman has worked extensively with numbers his entire career. He holds a degree in Chemical Engineer from the University of Texas at Austin. His latest endeavour he is combining his number skill and one of his favorite past time/hobbies (sports) - to see more visit http://www.ihavetheedge.com or http://www.statoracle.com.
Written By: David Bellman
