Friday, August 3, 2007

A Quiz

Quick! Which player is on steroids:

Home Runs by Age:

Age: 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Player A: 13 27 26 44 30 39 40 34 45 44 24
Player B: xx 16 25 24 19 33 25 34 46 37 33

Age: 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
Player A: 32 44 39 29 44 38 47 34 40 20 12 10
Player B: 42 40 37 34 49 43 46 45 45 5 26 20

I eagerly anticipate your responses.

7 comments:

Robert Lynch said...

Well, you finally got me to comment, but it was a pretty dirty tactic. That said, you put up a very convincing argument. While I didn't intend on looking up who Players A and B were, I did want to add up all the homers. Player A was fairly obvious, but Player B through me for a loop since I knew no one had that many home runs for their career. A little research later and your point is very well made. While I won't say any more, else I ruin the surprise for everybody else, I would note that Player B's birthday is in the middle of the season, and yet you still just put up his season stats. I wonder how it would break down if you actually did it by age.

Unknown said...

I used their age as listed at www.baseball-reference.com. And yes, I am cheating a bit. I plan on elaborating in a very long post once this has been up long enough.

E. W. Lynch said...

Not to spoil the fun I too will limit my comments. I believe that the purpose of this exercise is to pit an old great player against a new one, and have everyone accuse ye olde tyme great, because when dates are removed we have no idea who to accuse of steroid use so we'll just pick the one with superior numbers. That being said, B is the new player with the worse numbers whom I will accuse of being a user, even though it makes no sense. Call me liar.

L. H. Lynch said...

Are we operating under the assumption that one of the players does use steroids, or is it possible that neither do? I would say Player B anyway, because his numbers tend to be less consistent than Player A's.

Unknown said...

Player A averaged 32.83 home runs per season with a standard deviation of 11.18. Player B averaged 32.91 home runs per season with a standard deviation of 11.63. I don't think those numbers are divergent enough to be indicate that Player B's numbers are less consistent that Player A's on any sort of significant level.

L. H. Lynch said...

Oh.

E. W. Lynch said...

To further elaborate on my own thoughts, both players put up excellent numbers, there is very little difference between them from the info we have available, but one player is an all time great whom we would never accuse of using if his name was actually attached to his numbers.