Astros HOF Index: Ancient Greek Mathematics

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate drops to zero.” — Tyler Durden

People of a certain age immediately recognize the line above. It comes from the book and movie “Fight Club.” It also happens to match a common belief about statistics. The larger the sample size the more likely you get somewhere close to level. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine whether you are viewing something statisticians call “noise” or whether you are viewing something meaningful.

Bill James is currently retired, but in his heyday he invented something he called the Pythagorean theory. In essence, you can take the number of runs and runs allowed for a team and predict their record. In most seasons,…