• Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    17 days ago

    Thanks for that. I’d never heard the term before.

    It sounds a little subjective though? Are there features that can be used to quantity how “P-Hacky” something is?

    I feel like a sports state of “a team tends to lose if thier top scoring player in the first quarter is injured before the end of the first half” has a lot of specific weirdness, but my intuition drives that this specifically could be a very legitimate observation.

    How do you draw the line?

    • 42firehawk@fedinsfw.appEnglish
      6·
      17 days ago

      Usually p hacking doesn’t come from 1 constraint, especially a well explained one, but instead comes from adding a couple or completely unexplained constraints (like a team losing more if their coaches wife is in one section of the stands or another) because at that point it’s decreasing the number of samples (times you have as a reference) to force a significant result.

      So usually for sports p hacking is stats about 1 team only, rather than a general stat about the sport. Preferably a restriction on the other team, then a follow up game based restriction so it seems plausible to the viewer.