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Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

Practically everything in the world more complex than basic physics is non-deterministic, especially who wins games of skill. Things occur or don't occur with probabilities.

Even if you have a 95% chance of winning each game (unrealistic IMO), the probability of winning 81 games in a row is under 2%.

This is less apparent in other sports than in baseball, not because the outcomes of those games are more deterministic, but because fewer games are played per season.

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You are a bayesian analysis with strong priors on the chance of winning. I'm not objecting to your critique (as I don't know much about sports), I just keep thinking of P(data | model).

Well, there is no sport or other organized competitive activity I can think of where the best in the world beats the second best in the world more than 95% of the time.

Rugby Union. I'd have to look at the exact numbers, but the New Zealand All Blacks have an amazing win rate. They do play the second best team in the world (either Australia or South Africa) on a regular basis and over the last four years have only lost once or twice. Won the last two World Cups.

Edit: Here's the data[0]. A 76% win rate since 2003. Twenty-two game winning streak in 2013. Never ranked lower than 3 in the world since 2003.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_national_rugby_u...

As a proud New Zealander it pains me to point out that the All Blacks still fall way short of the benchmark set by the parent comment - i.e. beating the second best 95% of the time.

As an Australian, maybe it just feels that way.

[Edit: just realised the original point was talking about beating the world's second best, not any opposition, so the All Blacks still don't come close to the 95% in the context originally mentioned]

That made me laugh (I'm a kiwi), but it's not just a feeling, it's not far off the truth. With Steve Hansen as coach the All Blacks' have won a staggering 92% of their games[1].

There's plenty of articles talking about how their dominance has increased through the professional era[2]. I'm not sure how likely it is to last though given just how many of our key players have left since the world cup, and historically I've NEVER felt confident of the outcome any time we play Australia.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/international/ne...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/sep/11/all-blacks...

The last time the All Blacks lost to Australia, in New Zealand, was 2001. That's 18 tests at home without loss to the Wallabies.[0] Of course, Australia hasn't been ranked second best in the world that entire time.

Against the Boks it's six home games all won, since the last loss in 2009.[1]

Overall, home and away, not quite the 95% originally suggested, but still incredibly dominant in the age of professional team sport.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rugby_union_matches...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rugby_union_matches...

Maybe sprinting?

Competitions for "best score" (where score is a time, a number, etc) fall into a different category of sport than those where competitors are facing off head-to-head and there is interaction between competitors. And among the "best score" competitions, those which there is little variance in outcomes will result in a much higher win rate of "best" versus "second best" (a powerlifter or sprinter's score may only vary a few % between good and bad days. a bowlers' or golfers' can be much higher).

Good point. I'd guess that's true of stuff like weightlifting also. These sports that are about pushing your body as far as it can go in one dimension are a lot simpler and "purer" than a team game with lots of moving parts like baseball.

Good call. 800m-10km track races too.

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