Do you watch baseball? Well, if you do, you can almost certainly tell me what ERA, RBI, and AVG mean in the context of the sport? Can you tell me what WHIP, ERA+, and WAR are? If you can, then you’re up to date on the far better ways we have to model and predict baseball outcomes and making more informed analysis about a player.

However, some people refuse to buy into these new statistics. They think it’s more important that a pitcher have more wins than give up fewer runs, walk fewer batters, or allow fewer hits. Who cares that half of all pitchers NEVER get a chance to bat and score a run themselves, they are at fault if their team doesn’t win! Those new age statistics that try to factor out run support and wins and losses, who needs them?

So now, of course, you’re asking what in the world advanced statistics has to do with video displays?

Basically, many reviews are still using ERA, RBI, and other rudimentary statistical tools instead of more advanced tools that we have available. I’ll open magazines and see the average color temperature in a graph, but no indication of the grayscale or gamma error. Saying a display is accurate because it has a temperature of 6500K is wrong. 6500K might be right, or it might be wrong, but it doesn’t tell you for sure. Just like a pitcher being undefeated might indicate he is good, or it might be that his team scores 40 runs every time he pitches and he can’t lose.

I delve into this over at Theo’s Roundtable this week, talking about how reviewers need to start using the more advanced tools they now have available to them and leave the old methods behind. What was great when it was introduced 20 years ago might no longer be as good, or easy to understand, and what we can use now.