Take note when Eagles are rated as underdogs

Profit and Loss tables have been a handy at-a-glance tool in the punters’ armoury for many years.

But as with any metric that uses less than a year’s worth of data, we must always ask ourselves the same question: is this information reliable for next year, or should I assume the result has been influenced by luck or randomness?

Bigger samples are better. The more evidence we have, the more we can reduce the effects of randomness. But a sample can also be too big, whereby the challenge of retrieving the extra data isn’t justified by the likelihood it will tell you anything worthwhile or different to what you already have.