Quote:
Originally Posted by hjrrockies
Standard deviation (the square root of the variance) is still well-defined for distributions other than normal.
|
Defined, but not all that useful unless we know more about the distribution. For example, if the distribution is highly skewed to the left and I would assume the mean is assigned to a rating of 50, then that would mean that the 30 point rating difference between a 20-rated player and 50-rated player wouldn't mean too much in absolute terms, but the 30 point rating difference between a 50-rated player and an 80-rated player would mean a great deal.
And if the ratings were distributed somewhat normally, I think that would a problem too. They really should be skewed.
Plus, in the example given - you might find yourself getting all excited about that player in the deadball era with an 80 power rating. Then you would find out that what that really means is that he hits 5 home runs a season instead of 1 like the 20-rated guy. So now in your mind, if you're in the deadball era, you have try to mentally disregard a player's power rating, which is hard to do with that long lovely blue line and 80 rating staring at you. I'd much rather those players have a 22 and 20 power ratings instead as they probably would have in absolute mode.
I don't mean to be a killjoy or anything - I'm amazed at the work the development team does to bring us such an amazing game.
But in this case - without further info about how this works and what the distributions are like and more of an explanation - the first thing I'll do is turn off the relative ratings mode and go back to absolute.