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PRETORIA, South Africa
Weezer's "Represent" was blaring across the delirious,
victorious American locker room about the time Bill Clinton
strolled in.
Landon Donovan'a injury-time game-winner over Algeria
had sprung the United States into the knockout round and set
off parties from here to back home. The most important
moment in American soccer history is what team officials
were calling it, at least until Saturday afternoon's
game against Ghana.
The players knew the 1-0 victory was big, but the enormity
hit home when -- of nowhere -- just sort
of walked in. He appeared more in awe of the players than
the players of him.
Someone handed the former President a soda. He put his arm
around Donovan. He sought out coach Bob Bradley. The party
went on. Clinton wound up just hanging out for 45 minutes;
some think he would've stayed hours longer if, you know,
the guys didn't have to actually get dressed.
An exploratory analysis was suggested by one of our
egghosts, who wrote:
Are you going to check the USA EGGs response to the event of
the American
National Team goal against Algeria yesterday ?? I would
like to suggest to
check the response of the USA EGGs after the goal. It was
truly a very very
exciting event for the American sport fans.
Yubal
While this was not part of our planned World Cup coverage,
it was indeed a hugely exciting moment for the developing
American soccer fan base. An exploratory analysis looked at
the match plus 45 minutes after the goal. The first
following image shows this whole period, and the data are
from all eggs in the network.
The second figure shows just the 45 minutes following the
goal, again looking at the response from the full network.
This corresponds also to the time President Clinton spent
with the team celebrating in the locker rooms.
The third image is the same period as the first, looking at
the match plus the 45 minute aftermath. In this case, only
the US eggs are considered. There are 16 currently running,
so it is a reasonable sample. There is an even stronger
downward trend, which continues after the match. Please note
the caveat following the figures.
It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny
statistical
effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from
noise. This means that every "success" might be largely
driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect
can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of
similar analyses.
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