| >it's that you can't apply statistics to prove this at all If there are not statistical differences, then there are no performance differences. Cheating by definition should imply performance differences. If he is cheating, then at some point in the future, if that method becomes detectable and he has to stop, then his play will suddenly suffer, which would be more evidence. Claiming that statistics cannot answer this question with statistics is not true. It may be hard, or the current sample too small, but claiming stats is not usable is a misunderstanding of statistics. >This is like the statistical analyses that show election rigging by highlighting a statistically improbable distribution of results This only works on the public, and is not what professional statisticians that analyze elections do. And even here, if the event is rare enough, say 1 part in quadrillions, and the analysis is correct, then yes, we would certainly conclude there was rigging. All human knowledge is statistical. Things we claim to be true are only statistically true to large odds, so even for election rigging, if the stats reach some level of certainty, then it is completely valid proof that would hold in court. The pop idiocy of election rigging claims has never risen to that level. >it is completely avoidable if you cheat competently No, it is not. It may only lower the signal to noise ratio, but there is still detectable differences. If you continually improve the statistics and are forced to lower the signal, eventually the signal would be so low as to not affect the system, which in this case is chess games. Physics, for example, can tease events out of on the order of 1 part in trillions and demonstrate signal. Plenty of other things do the same. |