All week long the sports media has refused to use simple math to analyze Bill Belichick’s decision last week to go for it on 4th down versus the Colts. Even though the media assumes (correctly?) that the viewer is an intellectual slouch, football media machine always projects an attitude of analysis and discussion.
I did read one article that offered a proper analysis, but its tone gives the impression that it involves extreme math. In fact, the analysis is simple conditional probability. Using the probability from that article, this diagram shows how simple the decision is.
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