Way back when I took a class in statistics, it taught me an important lesson. Never trust anyone else's data analysis unless you can see exactly how they created the statistics. this, of course goes double for politicians! It also provided me with one of my favourite quotes "It has come to my attention that politicians use statistics rather like a drunk uses a lamp post, more for support than illumination". Still I like statistics, or at least I like my data sets. So it upsets me when my own data bites me in the bum. You see it turns out that since retiring and loosing my weekly fix of tabletop action with Trebian's Monday Night Gamers (you know the ones who meet on a Tuesday) I am actually less of a wargamer and more of a writer about wargaming!
So far this year I have played three, yes that's THREE, games only! I really need to get my finger out, don't I. After all the numbers don't lie.
Well, my favorite statistics quote is,
ReplyDelete"The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases"
Now, if you ever have a hankering for a remote game, there is often an available seat at my table.
Thank you for the offer Jonathan I will take you up on that if you have a spare place on offer.
ReplyDeleteDon't sweat it, if you didn't realise until you looked at the numbers you're obviously not missing it. On retirement I found that I like thinking about and planning games as much, if not more than, playing them. I do sometimes get gamed out now.
ReplyDeleteAnd, if the data is valid, numbers and statistics never lie, only people do. Usually, it's either an invalid data-set (non-random sampling, etc.), or flawed analysis.