On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

The San Francisco Examiner devotes more than 1/3 of its content to sports, and of course a popular subject is the San Francisco Giants, who won the Major League Baseball championship last year. During the season in 2010, they won 92 games and lost 70 , a 56.8% winning fraction. As of last Friday they are 12 wins and 12 losses, only a 50% win fraction. Obviously, one concludes from reading the headlines, something has gone terribly wrong. The issue is I've not read past the headlines. Maybe there's compelling arguments made for how the team is playing. But invariably in the analysis of baseball and everything else, there is a lack of appreciation for the statistics of random numbers. Baseball games aren't fully random events, but there is clearly a random component to them. I think everyone recognizes that luck is a big factor. So a quick test: I'm going to assume the Giants had luck on their side last year, since they won the division (and ended up going on...