XKCD comics is written by Randall Munroe, a physicist who probably doesn’t know what hockey underlying numbers (ie: #fancystats or advance statistics) even are, let alone supports them… yet – for the most part – he gets it.
Mainstream sports commentary is full of poor analysis when it comes to using numbers appropriately. Most of this comes from a lack of understanding between the difference between inputs versus outputs and how much a player can control certain factors. (It should be noted that this is a broad generalization; not everyone falls into this category).
Benjamin Wendorf displayed a bit of these factoids in his recent article Why The Hockey News’ Ken Campbell is Wrong About Alex Ovechkin, but Campbell still didn’t get it.
What happened:
For those that do not know, here is a quick summary of Campbell’s article:
Hockey Graphs 