Nope you know full well that is not what I am saying and I have stated a thousand times that this is not the case. The nature of football and the vast numbers of exogenous factors involved means that although his model should be better at predicting results, there is no guarnatee. The randomness involved means that although there is a liklehood that 'the ginger statistical warrior' will be higher than you, Linz, WW, Tom, Dick and Harry it might not actually be the case.
Still you are right that this is quite fun and I'm happy to continue our 'rutting' exercise whilever you keep churning the same argument out. This has been quite a stimulating debate and all in all I've enjoyed it (although it's getting a bit tedious). I'm happy to keep up the predictions for a bit of fun and will be intrigued to see what happens. Unfortunately he didn't get back to me with his predictions for last night, but I'll pester him for this weekends.
Tell me somthing though Darren (i've noticed you've avoided my questions a lot in these threads) ..... if 'the ginger statistical warrior was to finish top of the league table, would you accept that the model/his professional judgement was a better judge of how good or bad teams are than the league table??
I really don't know what you are saying. Everyone else (including me) seems to think the model is a betting tool and it is not something to be used to define how good teams "really" are. Unless I am completely misunderstanding you, you seem to think that it does define how good teams "really" are, but because of "exogenous" factors, how good teams "really" are does not translate into actual results.
What I have been battering my head against a brick wall trying to argue for the last 327 years is that if this is what you are saying, it is necessarily true and hence tells us nothing about the external world.
I will try and explain what I mean, but it will involve me delving into some technical aspects of logic.
When something is "necessarily true" what that means is that it is true by definition. To use an earlier example, if I say "all fathers are male", that is necessarily true because the definition of "father" is such that all fathers must be male. Obviously such statements as "all fathers are male", whilst true, are fairly pointless as their truth depends on the definitions of the words used in the statement and hence tell us nothing that we did not already know.
Applying the concept of necessary truth to what I perceive as your interpretation of your friend's system, we can summarise this intepretation as follows "the system gives an accurate estimate of how good teams really are; this is because the system takes into account all factors that define how good a team really is;".
That statement is necessarily true in the same way that "all fathers are male" is necessarily true. The definitions set out in the statement mean that it cannot be anything other than true. However, it obviously tells us nothing about the external world (and hence cannot be used to predict results and league tables).
To put it another way (and will all due acknowledment to Popper), is there any evidence that could conceievably present itself to you that would make you think the system did not show how good teams really were? (you have already discounted the evidence of the league table and the evidence of results) If there isn't, then the system must be true by definition.
