What was Ruth like as a pitcher?

[EddieP]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Based on my line of work, the whole concept of statistical significance is borderline arbitrary nonsense to begin with lol.

Hmmmm interesting comment from a “ data scientist” LOL.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by EddieP

Hmmmm interesting comment from a “ data scientist” LOL.

Let me guess, you think a p-value of 0.049 tells you something about your null hypothesis that a p-value of 0.051 does not? Unless of course you've chosen an alpha of 0.10 (or some other arbitrary value), in which case both are somehow now informative when they previously weren't under your alpha of 0.05?

Frequentist statisticians use a tired framework. If you want to make useful predictions & observations, you should be using Bayesian methodologies.

[nat]

"Like players were putting the ball in play but not hitting it very well"

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's what was happening. But it doesn't really distinguish Ruth from anybody else in the deadball era (Rube Waddell aside).

IIRC, it used to be common for pitchers to throw a knuckleball every once in a while without being dedicated knuckleball pitchers. (Wikipedia confirms, FWIW.) So, it wouldn't be a surprise if Ruth threw the occasional knuckler, even if that wasn't his main pitch.