Statistics without context

England’s downfall and the dangers of ignoring the context in analytics

Southgate and his team had a clear plan for penalties. That plan had concrete evidence and arrived at firm conclusions from the statistical analysis. They had a list of the best penalty takers in the England team ranked in order of success, ready for the euros 2020 final.

What they forgot, was context.

Context; the Occasion and atmosphere.

• These players have not played in front of a massive crowd for more than 12 months.
• They had not faced the pressure of taking penalties in an international tournament final, ever. 
• Two of the five penalty takers had never experienced the atmosphere or occasion as players for more than one minute. Perhaps more importantly, they never came face-to-face with this goalkeeper on the pitch, in the box, until the critical moment.
• Two of the penalty takers had not played much competitive football during the tournament, compared to the other players on the pitch. They had no time to balance their emotional state and to assimilate into the occasion.

Context; the goalkeeper.

• I cannot be sure, but I will assume that the statistics did not consider the physicality and the tactical approaches of the goalkeepers they faced. The Italian keeper is a giant of a man and generally forces the players to choose. He does not allow trickery to make him choose for them.
• Two of the players involved in taking penalties had not faced this goalkeeper in a one on one challenge or, indeed, any challenge in the box in the previous 120 minutes.
• Two of the penalty takers had experienced the occasion and the goalkeeper. Both Harry Kane and Harry Maguire employed power, not trickery. They showed how to beat this goalkeeper in this context. Physically, they were no more or less tired than any other player on the pitch. Mentally, they were in the moment because they had experienced the context, the atmosphere for 120 minutes and had emotionally acclimatised.
• The two penalty takers brought on in the last minute of extra time tried trickery and guile instead of power. They had not been exposed to context, had no time to acclimatise, emotionally, mentally or physically.

This situation demonstrates the danger of using analytics and statistics without taking context into account. 

If Gareth Southgate could go back to that moment, I hope that he would do things differently and consider the context when looking at the value of statistical analysis. 

The challenge of using analytics and AI in life, especially in business, is to test your assumptions in the moment - what else would also have to be true for this assumption to be valid?