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The (no) numbers game

By Chris Sprow
ESPN The Magazine

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Ask Nate Silver about how many stats he sees as crucial to analyzing baseball, and he's at a loss. We figured as much; it's like asking Ansel Adams about his favorite shade of grey. "I don't know if there's any particularly good way to quantify the precise number," he e-mails, "but as Carl Sagan would say, billions and billions …" If only soccer had such a problem. In his current cover story on Lionel Messi, Chad Nielsen notes, "There is no quantitative method to compare players from d ...

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