USA Today article of analysis of Saints penalty disparity

insidejob said
Here, with data: http://girodstreetendzone.com/the-saints-are-absolutely-getting-hosed/

And more data: http://girodstreetendzone.com/and-its-only-gonna-get-worse-unless-we-strike-back/

Written by one of our very own.

All of that is still just numbers comparing our penalties to opponents penalties and then coming to grandiose conclusions: " This is statistically forking impossible. " he says without doing any statistical analysis at all.

In order to determine statistical significance, he would need to determine the average number of penalties over a given time period for every team in the league, then he would need to control for as many variables as he could and determine both the mean and standard deviation for penalties for and against. Then he would need to compare this to the actual numbers called on the saints this year in order to allow him to determine a confidence interval that we are in fact outside of normal territory. At no point will the conclusion be "statistically forking impossible", at best it would be "very unlikely".

*Edit: Apologies mods, I was not trying to trigger the swear filter, simply quoting from the article.