Proof Comparing Different Eras is Flawed
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by user Alex Holowczak
I read Shrubbery's excellent article about the best baseball team ever. The point was raised that matching them up was flawed, and I thought I could answer it.
I was doing something for the Snooker Section.
I made a page, Alex Holowczak's National Snooker Champions (this is the main page of that section - look at that to find out the system I used to work it out). As I did Northern Ireland, I came across something interesting.
The most wins by a Northern Irishman in the fictitious system I made up was by Dennis Taylor, with 12. Two behind him on 10 was Joe Swail. He beat Alex Higgins into third, who had 5.
So the order, you'd think, would be Taylor-Swail-Higgins.
Yet, Taylor and Higgins are both World Champions, Taylor in 1985, and Higgins in 1972 and 1982. Both were in the top 16 in the World for many seasons. Swail has never been higher than World Number 10, and has only been in the Top 16 for about five seasons. He has never got further than the Semi Finals of the World Championship.
The problem was that Taylor and Higgins were in competition, whereas Swail had no competition at all over the last decade.
So according to that, Swail is the second best Northern Irish player of all time. Yet he was significantly worse than both Taylor and Higgins.
The same can be seen with Wales. Reardon won limited Wales titles, behind Griffiths and Williams. Yet Reardon was a six-time World Champion, and Griffiths was only a one-time winner and Williams two.
I know that by ignoring a bulk of players may distort it, but it shows how in two different ways, it makes players from different generations cannot be easily compared.
Date
Mon 07/31/06, 4:34 am EST
