Distribution of largest lead in college games
by Ken Pomeroy on Tuesday, May 29, 2012
This is not the kind of thing that will make you smarter about college hoops. It might make you dumber because your knowledge of this will take the place of something more useful. But as I work on larger projects, it’s often necessary to wander off course and make something visual of the data I’m working with, even if it means doing so through some sort of trivial task. And that gives you some insight into why you are looking at the plot below, which describes the distribution of the largest lead in last season’s games.
The most common largest lead by either team in a game last season was 11 points, which was observed in 366 games. The smallest largest lead was four points, occurring twice last season.
If you’re like me - and who isn’t - you want to know about those two…