Numb3rs

I assume some of you caught last Friday night's episode wherein a 25 year-old high school dropout and fantasy league champion sabermetrician detects steroid use. Well. I've tried to be a fan of the show but haven't been able and this episode was no exception. I did write about it and The Science Channel program "Baseball's Secret Formula" this week on BP so you can check that out.

As far Numb3rs was concerned, did appreciate our hero the math professor noting that sabermetrics "really is a powerful form of analysis," and, in a voice-over companied by some nice graphics, he continued:

The physical nature of the game involves chance. So the difference between a hit and out could be millimeters or milliseconds. So when you have athletic situations involving chance repeated over and over again, a statistical analysis can isolate and reveal human performance.

Nice. Much of the rest wasn't however.