Thursday, October 18, 2007

Graham Harrell Stat Projections

So I had this in-depth thread ready to go where I was going to wow you with some thorough insight on the production we can expect to see from Graham Harrell the rest of the season. The only problem is...the data isn't thorough enough to make a prediction with any significant level of confidence. Here are some thoughts on my work:

1. NW State game caused problems with my model since he only played 2+ quarters...and the fact that they're a 1-AA team. With their numbers in the model, I projected GH to throw for 5331 yards. The only problem was that the confidence level was at 47.4% on the model.

2. After tweaking the model (removing NW St and adjusting accordingly) I was able to raise the confidence level to 54.2% and the yardage projection changed by 12 yards to 5343 yards.

3. I made one last adjustment to the model (giving more emphasis to Big 12 games, potential weather issues, etc) and the confidence level went down to 51.4% while the yardage projection increased to 5389 yards.

All told, this is the best conclusion that I've reached:

A straightline projection of Graham's numbers based on his performance through 7 games gives us a total of 5402 yards through 12 regular season games. While the confidence levels of my models were relatively low, it is moderately safe to say that Graham will eclipse the 5000 yard mark this season. As stated previously, my projections put him somewhere around 5350 yards with a variance of approximately +/- 100 yards.

Maybe I should've spent more time with advanced calculus and statistical modeling.

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