What sports records will stand the longest?

[BeerMoney]

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The only competitive activity that involves ZERO luck whatsoever is chess.

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Sure it does, that's why the pest player doesn't win every single match.

I would say distance running involves the smallest amout of luck.

[istewart]

Ripken's record was overhyped and uninteresting. Never mention it again.

Chamberlain averaging 50.4 points a game.
Gibson's ERA of 1.12.

[Ice Man]

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I wasn't joking. I believe it is more interesting to speak of this subject where luck plays only a small part. Otherwise this question boils down to mainly probability theory.

Meanwhile if you do want to bring these other sports records to play, HOW DARE YOU GUYS offer opinions without doing a little math. Some of the records you nominate are at least a hundred times more likely than others to be broken. Simple probability would show this.

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Does this guy have a website? Let's do a QLC and FTR on his ass!

Who's with me?

[tdarko]

yes and your post was so useful to this thread.

[tdarko]

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we're trying to have a fun conversation about sports records, and you pipe in about math. i respect you, but let's keep the equations out of this one.



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tell that to gatts

[Gatts]

Here's a little math concerning the 56-game hit streak yoinked from a Neyer column (done by Jose Burillo)

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Batting average is not relevant here because it counts hits per at-bats, and we know that many plate appearances don't count as at-bats. So we have to add at-bats, walks, sacrifice flies and hits, and hit-by-pitches to find plate appearances. This makes 7,671 plate appearances for Joe D in 1,736 games, an average of 4.41878 plate appearances per game. In those 7,671 PA, Joe D has 2,214 hits, which makes a ratio of hits per PA equal to .28862. This means that Joe had a hit in exactly 28.862 percent of his plate appearances. Or that he did not have a hit in 71.138 percent of his plate appearances. How many games did Joe D go 0-fer? Would have to dig further in the web to find out, but the theoretical probability of Joe going hitless in a game is (.71138)^(4.41878)=0.22206. Theoretically he went hitless in 22.206 percent of his games. I would be curious to see how close this is to the real value.


Anyway, this means that the probability of Joe having at least a hit in a game is 1-.22206=.77794. For 56 games this makes (.77794)^56=.00000078159. This means that out of a million streaks of 56 games he could play, Joe would have a hitting streak in 0.78159 of them. So not even one in a million ...

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[Gamblor]

I would say distance running involves the smallest amout of luck.

I argue there's insane amounts of luck in distance running. The one thing that tires you out more than anything is stepping on uneven ground. While it is equally likely for anyone to step on a bump or litter or whatever, the unluckiest are the ones who step on the most. Or have a bug follow them along the course. etc. etc.

I also don't understand your pest remark.

[Steve McQueen]

Gagne's consecutive saves record.

Quadruple-doubles in basketball-there are 4 I believe. Olajuwon, Robinson, the Big O, and I forget the fourth dude.

[Redsox]

David....

ok, here we go. a bit of maths. I'm not saying that DiMaggio's record is the most difficult to break, but lets look into the math behind the probablility of an above average hitter (lets say a .320 hitter) breaking Joltin' Joe's record.

.320 hitter chance of NOT getting a hit in an average AB = .68
Average AB's for a starting baseball player per game (assume 600 AB's per season) = 3.7
Chances of NOT getting a hit in a game = .680 ^ 3.7 = .24
Meaning, the chance of getting AT LEAST one hit in a given game = .76 or (1-.24)

The chances of getting AT LEAST one hit in 57 consecutive games, even for a .320 hitter then is .76 ^ 57 = .00000016 or * 100 = .00001608 %. Seems unlikely. I'll go into some of the other records mentioned (specifically Orel Hershiser's record) later.

Eric

[tolbiny]

Russian heavy weight wrestler- i think he won 2 straight Olympic gold medals and didn't lose a single match untill his final olympics, where he lost in his final match (to take silver). I think he spanned 12 years or something without losing (including all other tournies he entered).
Gotta think of his name.