Neil Paine, one of the main writers of a famous statistical blog known as FiveThirtyEight reflected on the Cleveland Browns total annihilation of, a supposed to be good team, the Cincinnati Bengals. Paine goes on to statistically explain the likelihood of such an outcome by elaborating on Hal Stern's findings almost a couple of decades ago. Stern found that the margin of victory over the point-spread can be shown by a normal distribution with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 13.86. When adjusting this scale to the pre-game predicted ELO ratings, Paine found the same result and therefore showing that the likelihood that the Browns would beat the Bengals 24-3 was only a minuscule 1.5%.
Paine's most prominent rhetorical device present in his article is statistical evidence to help support his claims which falls under an author's logos. Neil Paine writes this article not only to intrigue the audience by showing just how rare that game was but his overall purpose is to show that surprisingly enough that isn't the most unlikely to happen outcome of a game so far this season. Paine goes on to prove that last week when the Miami Dolphins faced up against the San Diego Chargers the Dolphins had a slim 0.3% chance of beating the Chargers by a 37 point margin. Paine is trying to prove that these absurd and rare outcomes of games are becoming more frequent in the NFL nowadays and that it wouldn't be a surprise to see one in this upcoming week of games.
I thoroughly enjoyed Paine's article although some may find it nonsensical. The reason why I cherish and appreciate such brilliant articles is because of my strong passion for sports and my knowledge of statistics which allows me to understand the loquacious mathematical terms Paine throws at the audience.
(http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how-unexpected-was-clevelands-shellacking-of-cincinnati/)
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