[OT] The secret to Cornell's success this year?

Seeking Olympic gold? Wear red

Discuss.

/Gotta go to yoga. No time to think of a witticism for this post. I know you're crushed, but in the long run, it's best that I'm "centered."

[Q]Jerseygirl Wrote: Seeking Olympic gold? Wear red
Discuss.
/Gotta go to yoga. No time to think of a witticism for this post. I know you're crushed, but in the long run, it's best that I'm "centered."[/q]It was an interesting article. Heard about it on NPR. [www.npr.org] the author discussed his research; Olympic athletes wearing red win more often than those in blue; they had some sports statistician who came on and discussed how it just didn't make sense, so it must be wrong. Good work Sherlock.

Well: Gotta go to yoda.

[Q]Jerseygirl Wrote:

Seeking Olympic gold? Wear red [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7899097/]

Discuss.

/Gotta go to yoga. No time to think of a witticism for this post. I know you're crushed, but in the long run, it's best that I'm "centered."[/q]1) Right, let somebody else take the faceoffs.

2) If you wear the color of success and then call your team the Redmen, do you get called before the NCAA correctness posse?

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

2) If you wear the color of success and then call your team the Redmen, do you get called before the NCAA correctness posse?

[/q]

Maybe, if there are any women on the team.

Heh. A coworker asked me about that (because I have Cornell Hockey stuff all over my cube. Here was my response:

Cornell's road uniforms are indeed red - very red:

[link to a picture of a road uniform on elynah]

while their home uniforms have white shirts and red pants:

[link to a picture of a home uniform on elynah]

I found the stats immediately, but had to be careful, because I know that in the past the team has worn red at home instead. Therefore, I couldn't say for sure before 1990 (when I started following the team) which color they were wearing in any given game. Since 1990 I know they've always worn red on the road and white at home. During that time, in league games they're 106-47-22 (.669) at home (in white) but only 84-71-20 (.537) on the road (in red). The league plays a balanced schedule, so that is against the same teams home and away. So being at home more than outweighs any advantage that wearing red gives them on the road. Unfortunately, uniform color is 100% correlated with venue, so there's no way to assign variability to these factors - we'd need different data (where uniform color was not correlated with venue) to be able to do that accurately.

That is to say, their average record is .602, so we can't say whether the home advantage is +.070 and wearing white is -.003 or if being at home is +.1 and wearing white is -.033. All we know is that (white & home) is .067 better than (red & away).

Of course, you could just go right to the fact that of the 12 ECAC teams, the only three to have ever won the national championship have red uniforms: Cornell Big Red, Harvard Crimson, and RPI (scarlet?) Engineers...

What can I say? I'm a dork...

[Q]Robb Wrote:
Unfortunately, uniform color is 100% correlated with venue, so there's no way to assign variability to these factors - we'd need different data (where uniform color was not correlated with venue) to be able to do that accurately.[/q]

You could subset neutral venue games, figure out who was wearing "home" and "road" jerseys, what the color combinations were, and take the records. You may have to assign a weighted score based on the portion of each uniform that is red. Also, it is not purely binary -- other colors may lead to losing (hopefully, brown and its various ugly hues).

There's really no way to boil this down to team sports (although I admire the effort) at least not organized ones as currently played. That is because there are a ton of factors that play into it, not just home/away and possibly uniform color, but let's not forget about team skill. You appear to do this with the balanced schedule, but over multiple years there are obviously big differences in skill, and differences within a year of injuries, who was in goal that night, etc.

The only way to account for one factor is to eliminate the others, and since skill, luck, venue, etc are unquantifyable, we can't just subtract them out.

The only way to do it is what they did, which is to pick sports in which the color is randomly assigned, and the same people get different colors in different matches. You essentially roll a die to determine which athlete/team gets one color for that game. Over a long enough haul, if administered fairly, you can assume that skill, location, luck, etc even out, and you can see if any differences in wins, based on the only remaining factor of color, is statisically significant.

Also note that the article never claimed that more red was better than less red. One could assume that, but they didn't say it, since they were probably only studying situations in which head guards/equipment was either all red or all something else. Cornell wears some about of red home and away, of course, so it could not matter at all. Or at least, it would matter less than red vs. say, green. This part is of course assuming that there is validity to the theory. It could be total hogwash.

[Q]There's really no way to boil this down to team sports... That is because there are a ton of factors that play into it, not just home/away and possibly uniform color, but let's not forget about team skill....This part is of course assuming that there is validity to the theory. It could be total hogwash.[/q]I think you've gpt it right at the end there.

[Q]Robb Wrote:

Of course, you could just go right to the fact that of the 12 ECAC teams, the only three to have ever won the national championship have red uniforms: Cornell Big Red, Harvard Crimson, and RPI (scarlet?) Engineers...

What can I say? I'm a dork...

[/q]
RPI is Cherry Red.

Let me add:
[q]From the Cornell Alumni Magazine Vol 104 No. 4 describing why Cornell's uniforms are bright red
Some give credit to legendary hockey and lacrosse coach Ned Harkness, who came to the Hill in 1963. He changed the color of the hockey uniforms to bright red (perhaps because that was what he was accustomed to, after eighteen years at RPI); other Cornell sports teams followed suit. [/q]

When Cornell plays Brown at home, even with white jerseys, it's wearing more red than Bruno is.

The only thing I don't like about Cornell's away red jerseys is they're not bright spanking clean and new and kind of remind me of the Soviet uniforms albeit without the dorky half-dome helmets.