Ovechkin and O-zone Obsession
Alright, confession time: I can get a bit obsessed with statistics.
Can you blame me? Numbers are just so... solid. There's no wiggle room - four is greater than three, 75 percent is more than 70 percent, and so on. Digits are evidentiary, eye-opening, hunch-confirming (or -disabusing) and inarguable (even when they're not). They'll take "he's great" and tell you just how great, and help to establish reasonable expectations going forward so that drop-off doesn't catch you by surprise.
But they can also obscure the forest as you stare intently at a single tree.
Case in point, the matter of "zone starts." Last June, I had it all figured out - Brooks Laich would take the lion's share of the defensive zone starts that Nicklas Backstrom had been forced to take, freeing up the top line for all the offensive-zone starts they could handle. After all, Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin had seen their O-zone starts and offensive production drop dramatically in 2010-11, and surely one way to goose the latter was to increase the former. Neil Greenberg posited that "an extra offensive start per game could lead to 9-10 more points scored over the course of an 82-game season" - get 'em two more starts in the offensive zone per night and that's 20 points apiece! Next problem?
Except it's probably not that simple, and that becomes apparent when you look at the raw numbers, which we'll do after the jump.
To begin with, we need to define terms - when we're talking about "offensive zone starts," we're talking about five-on-five, non-neutral zone face-offs. Here are Ovechkin's for the last three regular seasons (via the absolutely indispensable BehindtheNet.ca; click to enlarge):For 2011-12, Ovechkin has been on the ice for 241 (106+135) offensive zone draws at five-aside and 218 (97+121) draws in his defensive zone. Take that 241 and divide it into 459 (241+218) and you get 52.5 - Ovechkin offensive zone start percentage on the season (which, again, doesn't include the 274 neutral zone draws for which he's been on).
To put that in perspective, the Sedin Twins, who are essentially the gold standard for offensive zone start percentage, clock in at just over 75%, and the top Caps are John Erskine (really?) and Mathieu Perreault, who are both a shade under 55% (what this means, among other things, is that the Caps' bench bosses haven't been nearly as aggressive in matching their personnel to zone starts as Alain Vigneault has).
In Ovechkin's most O-zone-heavy season, 2007-08, he had an O-zone start percentage of 58.1, but let's say we want to crank Ovi all the way up to 62.5%, an increase of ten percentage points over his current 2011-12 rate. What would that look like if we went back and replayed the season-to-date?
Obviously there are several ways to go about it, but if we hold his total non-neutral-zone draws constant and give Ovechkin 46 more offensive-zone draws while someone else takes 46 of the d-zone draws off his hands (what are they paying Joel Ward for, anyway?), that gets Ovi up to 62.5%. Heck, lets crank him all the way up to 64%, a number that would put him right around top-10 in the League in the metric, and would only require shifting 53 of his d-zone starts to the other end of the ice.
Fifty-three. One per game.
But let's not stop there - let's look at those 53 draws. Since this is all in our little fantasy world, let's say Backstrom has centered Ovi for all 53 of those games. [Pauses, pours a little out] At a 51.3% face-off percentage, that means the Caps would win 27 of those draws. So really, we're talking about one extra O-zone possession every two games. Does that matter? Perhaps, when you consider that "[f]or several seconds [after losing a defensive-zone draw at five-on-five]], the rate of shots allowed is as high as it is on a 5-on-3." Then again, let's think about that statement for a moment. It sounds impressive, but is the shot rate on a typical five-on-three really all that high (or do teams, for example, tend to work the puck around for a perfect, quick pass and shot)?
Prior to last night's games, the League-wide median five-on-three shot rate was right around twice the median five-on-four shot rate at just over 90 shots per 60 minutes, or one every 40 seconds. So what are teams likely to get in that "10-15 second" window? Moreover, in a five-on-three, the offense tends to be set up in roughly the "home plate" area - nearly every shot is a scoring chance. Off a faceoff, that's obviously not the case - the attacking team is pushed much further out. And finally, when faced with a defensive-zone draw, a coach is likely to put out his best available face-off man and defensive unit to counter the obvious territorial disadvantage as best he can. For the players taking the offensive-zone draw, they may have the positional upper-hand, but these aren't necessarily going to be "easy" minutes.
So there's a lot going on there, but it boils down to this - if the Caps had been aggressively starting Alex Ovechkin in the offensive zone all season to a degree which they'd never before used him and which would have him among the League leaders in offensive zone start percentage, a best-case net result would be roughly 27 more face-offs won in the offensive zone to date (far fewer if Marcus Johansson was taking them) and an additional seven-to-nine shots at a five-on-three rate (but not nearly as likely to generate a scoring chance as on an actual five-on-three) against tough defensive opponents. If one more offensive zone draw per game is equal to nine or ten additional points over the course of a season, we're talking six more points or so for Ovechkin. Does all of the above sound like it would generate six more goals? I'm not so sure (and neither were we at the time).
The last thing I'd note circles back to the big problem the Caps have had with possession that we discussed last week. As Cam Charron noted then, "[W]ith [Bruce] Boudreau, Washington had 21 more offensive zone faceoffs than defensive zone.... Since [Dale] Hunter’s arrival, there have been 100 more offensive zone faceoffs against Washington." That number is down to 98 now, but that's still a swing of plus-one per game to minus-three - that's not helping matters.
All of this isn't to say that zone start management isn't important and can't generate strategic advantages; it can (given the right personnel). And lord knows the Caps could use every little bit of help available to them. But it is easy to overstate the actual impact of some of these seemingly significant changes, like going from starting 52.5% offensive zone starts to 64%. After all, that's an increase of 11.5 percentage points, and 21.9%, and those are big numbers. Big, beautiful numbers.
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but if we hold his total non-neutral-zone draws constant and give Ovechkin 46 more offensive-zone draws while someone else takes 46 of the d-zone draws off his hands (what are they paying Joel Ward for, anyway?), that gets Ovi up to 62.5%. Heck, lets crank him all the way up to 64%, a number that would put him right around top-10 in the League in the metric, and would only require shifting 53 of his d-zone starts to the other end of the ice.
This speaks to the other side of the equation. Not just the extra chances/goals/points Ovechkin might get with more O-zone starts, but the goals that do not get scored because the Selke-challenged forward is not having to play defense.
If you've read this far...seek help.
I’d be curious as to how many goals have been scored within, say, five, ten and 15 seconds of an even-strength in-zone (O and D) draw for which Ovechkin was on the ice this year.
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by J.P. on Feb 16, 2012 11:28 AM EST via iPhone app up reply actions
It’s a good question.
If you've read this far...seek help.
by ThePeerless on Feb 16, 2012 12:31 PM EST up reply actions
Well given the discussion that follows the quoted text I imagine that the effect in terms of goals prevented by keeping AO’s DZone% down is just as minimal as the effect of goals scored by keeping AO’s OZone% up.
Release the Mackan!
by Killer_Carlson on Feb 16, 2012 11:29 AM EST up reply actions
It does seem like a relatively symmetrical relationship. Anything that you could argue would increase the GA should also apply to the GF, right?
Please, call me F&B.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think JP’s comment above speaks to a certain asymmetrical character to the relationship. If Ovechkin is getting an O-zone start, he’s going to be there at least as long as the Caps maintain possession there or they score. If he gets a D-zone start, maybe they try to get him off sooner.
If you've read this far...seek help.
by ThePeerless on Feb 16, 2012 12:34 PM EST up reply actions
I’m saying there’s no reason the % of goals against should be higher for D zone starts than the % of goals for of OZ starts. The C is going to win the same % of draws, and then if you speculate that the inability to clear is going to create more GA, that should be the same for GF unless you assume other teams clear better than the Caps. But now you are into team/system-specific stuff that works against the utility of the stat (i.e. simplicity).
Please, call me F&B.
You’re both right.
But you mention team-specifics, which makes me think of another point that didn’t make it into the post – players aren’t fungible. If one more O-zone start per game goes to Ovechkin and we’d expect an extra 9 or 10 points over the season, is there any reason to believe that Jay Beagle would get the same bump from that extra draw? If one extra D-zone draw goes to Ovechkin, wouldn’t we expect the results to be worse than if that draw went to Joel Ward?
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Of course, which is the reason coaches put different players out for different draws. Different players have different skill sets and I think players in the NHL are far less fungible than players in the MLB so some of the VORP-style assumptions break down in the NHL context (and here I’m specifically thinking of “quality” metrics).
If it truly was linear across all players (one OZ draw per game is an extra 9 or 10 points) then wouldn’t the numbers even out? Even if you take AO out of the OZ, the player who picks up that draw would get the 9-10 points over the course of the season. In which case the only really relevant factor would be total OZ and DZ draws for the entire team; the rest would just be how you wanted to distribute the points (and would allow for some crazy manipulation of stats in a contract year).
Please, call me F&B.
If you held total O-zone draws constant, yeah. The trick, of course, is to increase O-zone draws as a team, which happens via possession, which is nine-tenths of the law.
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Well the way some of the claims about the effects of zone starts it sounds almost like more offensive zone starts should inflate every players’ stats equally (shot quality doesn’t exist, after all). So one may infer that the effects of AOs zone starts have more to do with his stats individually than they do on the team as a whole.
That may be a bit of an extreme interpretation of zone starts and player differences, but most of the stuff I’ve read about zone starts seems to suggest that in terms of team performance it matters more what the zone split is on a team level (which as JP pointed out sucks under Hunter) than it does who is on the ice.
Release the Mackan!
by Killer_Carlson on Feb 16, 2012 12:41 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
If you go back and look at previous years’ numbers, I believe Joel Ward used to take a ton of extra D-zone draws for Nashville. He excelled in the face of that burden, too.
Managing Editor of On the Forecheck, SB Nation's blog covering the Nashville Predators, and a guy who can help you save money on all things hockey-related at Hockey Gear HQ.
Great post, and I think this really focuses on an important point. The actual impact of a lot of these stats gets overblown when they are shown in % or per-60 terms. Players don’t play 60 minutes so those numbers end up being spread across 3-4 games, and as you’ve shown the %s aren’t exactly as clear cut as they may seem. I’d also point out that the major stats used to analyze things only count ES tied or close, so that’s another big chunk of the game that is being ignored. All these things together just whittles down the meaning of these stats. They aren’t “nothing,” but they aren’t the whole pie either. I think that just makes it more important to temper conclusions (along the lines of the discussion from renstar’s great comment in the plus/minus fanpost) when you try to determine what these things mean. The grandiose and overly broad conclusions advanced by some in the staterati can be very frustrating.
Please, call me F&B.
by Rob Parker on Feb 16, 2012 12:10 PM EST reply actions 2 recs
It’s always kinda bothered me how this stat Ozone% is presented by Btn without the underlying data. Does anyone simply publish the number of zone starts in each zone, including the neutral zone?
You can find the underlying data, broken down by zone and whether the draw was won or lost, at BtN.
"Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful" George E.P. Box
I have $50 to Olie's autism charity or So Kids Can and a beer on the under for 50/57/107 as AO's final stat line for 2011-'12
And on Pekka Rinne's PK SV% dropping under .920 by the end of the '12 season
by Knee high to a duck on Feb 17, 2012 8:47 AM EST via mobile up reply actions 1 recs
Great post. Really highlights the need for uncertainty bars on some of these statistics. That can really help give a picture of the impact of sample size on the results we see.
Also, as alluded to by Rob, I think I’d rather see many of the rate stats in units of common play. So, either for a specific player or for league average at the position, per 30 second shift rather than per 60. For team PP/PK related stuff, per 2 min rather than per 60.
I'll have the milksteak, over hard
What do you mean the uncertainty bars? Do you mean ranges that demonstrate where a number likely falls rather than pinpoint numbers? How would that look in something like this?
Please, call me F&B.
Error bars are usually 95% confidence intervals, where the likelihood of the same data falling between the top and bottom is 95%.
How one would calculate that is beyond my ken, but I don’t think it’s particularly difficult if you know something about statistics.
Yeah, that is what I was getting at. It gets quite tricky, you can start with getting some bounds on your inputs and carrying the uncertainties throughout. Garbage in generally gets you garbage out.
The uncertainties in the inputs, in this context, are going to come from the limited samples of the zone starts and the face-off percentages. For example, the more face-offs, the more certain we are that the face-off percentage is representative of the player’s ability. Uncertainty creeps in here because Nicky is not taking his draws against the same guy every time, he is not a robot, the linesmen are different, etc, but with more samples we can be more reasonably sure that 51.3% is what he is. Compare results of the same study with say, Alex Semin taking the draws and you’d see higher uncertainty because we just don’t have good data on that (quantitatively at least ;-). This stuff can be time consuming and the complexity can balloon quickly, which is why people frequently don’t do it.
The 95% confidence interval is traditionally what is used in the hard sciences, but recently I’ve seen a few holy wars on the subject.
I'll have the milksteak, over hard
Confidence intervals tend to get smaller the larger the data pool. So, the first month of the season, the number is pretty worthless, but by March, I suspect the number gets a little more accurate.
Provided you can’t use historical data, sure. But this season you also have to account for the system change and other things so a moving window may be more appropriate. Either way, that is the point I was trying to make. With a large sample you can be reasonable certain and with small samples drawing conclusions is usually bad news. But how large? How certain? How small can your sample be and still draw a valid conclusion? I don’t know, and I’d like to see that analysis.
I'll have the milksteak, over hard
Ok, I’m not a stats guy nor do I play one on TV. But, hopefully I can answer a few questions/comments to the point where nobody says STFU! and someone can just tweak this:
You are interchanging two terms: confidence level and confidence interval.
95% is a confidence level (I am 95% confident that………). 95% is typically what people use, though you can use 99% or 90% or whatever you want.
A confidence interval is your margin of error. Think political polls. You can also set your confidence interval to be whatever you want. It can be +/- 1% or it can be +/-20%.
All of this is used in sampling statistics (using part of a population to estimate the true mean of a population).
The higher the confidence level you want in your answer, the higher the sample size needed. The wider your confidence interval, the fewer samples you need.
I’m not sure what specific objective you have. But, let’s say the objective is to predict someone’s average (per game) offensive zone start % in a given 82-game hockey season.
Well, if I’m correct, using a sample size calculator I found online……..if you have a population of 82-games…..in order to get a confidence level of 95% with a confidence interval of 4%……
You’d need a sample size of 72 games.
Leave the confidence level at 95% and up the confidence interval to 10% and your sample size needed drops to 44 games.
But, that’s a pretty high confidence interval.
Anyway, that’s what I got. Hope it helps…..
by CapsDegenerate on Feb 16, 2012 9:49 PM EST up reply actions
This is a terrific post, JP, really strong work.
I’m digesting it and looking at some numbers before I chime in. But I really enjoy this type of content.
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Thanks a lot. It’s my James Joyce stream-of-consciousness rant about my inner struggles to reconcile hard data with real-world application. Man vs. Machine. Faith vs. Science. Heady stuff.
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by J.P. on Feb 16, 2012 1:23 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
Faith vs. Science
You tempt me mightily, sir.
my inner struggles to reconcile hard data with real-world application
Struggle on. Every bit of insight adds to the understanding of the game and how it works, and increases this fan’s pleasure in following the team and the League.
This post does a nice job of putting form to niggling doubts I’ve had regarding the practical application of some of the rate stats we have at our disposal.
Patron saint of quality footwear.
Great post
Statistical theory is a whole academic field. In every field where stats are applied, it’s very difficult to flesh out cause vs. correlation. You can normally only compare two chunks of data at a time (eg. zone starts to goals). But, obviously so many other things affect the dependent variable.
Plus, this kind of stats approach is new to hockey and I don’t know of anyone earning a living doing it full time. There are several such people doing that in baseball analysis.
So, the leading practitioners in this new field are guys who can only puruse it part-time (I think). It’s in the early stages so the call for caution is wise since the consenus thinking will keep evolving.
btw – nice to a haven for my geekness. I eat this stuff up but don’t know anyone else personally who does so come here for it.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.
z
All right, some thoughts.
First, I’d be interested to see the analysis of shots done on a Fenwick level, and I did some checking around but couldn’t find anything. In other words, after a won O-Zone draw, what do your Fenwick rates look like? Better yet would be your scoring chance rate, but I have zero hope that that data is available.
Anyway, on to the point at hand. If AO got 27 more faceoffs won, and that translates into a shot every 40 seconds, then let’s say he’s going to be on-ice for an additional 16 shots (assuming 60% of won draws – and, yes, I pulled that number out of my ass – yield 40 seconds of zone time with which to generate that one shot). At an on-ice Shooting % of 10%, that’s another 1.6 goals, which we’ll round up to two.
Then we have to add in the goals that get scored off of a lost draw, of which surely there are some. Let’s be generous and call it another two.
An additional 4 goals, or two-thirds of a win.
My takeaway here is that in order to really move the needle, you need to force-feed the zone starts, getting him up to the Sedin levels. Every little bit helps, as you note. But I’m with you on the general conclusion that going from 50 to, say, 60% is not a panacea.
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In other words, after a won O-Zone draw, what do your Fenwick rates look like?
I don’t know about percentage, but in the same way they got that 0.8 Corsi, it’s 0.6 Fenwick.
Better yet would be your scoring chance rate, but I have zero hope that that data is available.
BSB and Neil’s data has it around 0.471 on average.
Another factor to consider may be that giving AO more O zone starts is taking them away from players who largely waste them, like Johansson (who led the team in zone start% last season). So maybe we’re up to one win. I really hope this team doesn’t finish with 92 when it needed 94.
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by red army line on Feb 16, 2012 1:32 PM EST up reply actions
Do you have a link, or can you explain the methodology that got to .8 and .6?
If the team ends up at 92 and needed 94 I’d look at a lot of other things before I got to “improper use of zone starts” as a culprit.
Please, call me F&B.
by Rob Parker on Feb 16, 2012 1:36 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
Like Bruce not putting out his checking line after taking the lead late at Nashville!
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Exactly.
And the blowout loss to the Rochester Americans.
And 0 SOG and a -1 following a 2 on 0.
Please, call me F&B.
In just over a one-week span, the Caps:
1. Lost Mike Green to injury (Nov. 11)
2. Lost at home in a shootout to NJ after having a 2-0 lead (Nov. 12)
3. Lost 3-1 at Nashville after taking a 1-0 lead with under five minutes left in the game (Nov. 15)
4. Lost 4-1 at Winnipeg after Brooks Laich missed the net on a shorty that would’ve tied the game and Blake Wheeler came right back down the ice and scored to make it 3-1 (Nov. 17)
5. Lost 7-1 at Toronto (Nov. 19)
That was one hella rough stretch.
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If the team ends up at 92 and needed 94 I’d look at a lot of other things before I got to "improper use of zone starts" as a culprit.
Bingo. If zone starts get you 2-3 more goals (using fd’s numbers), goals on shots from center ice just about level that back out.
I'll have the milksteak, over hard
Do you have a link, or can you explain the methodology that got to .8 and .6?
Whoops, that’s .425 SCs. Here’s the post on Corsi. Not finding the one on Fenwick, though I’ll keep looking.
Unfortunately, this team is at the point where every little advantage is probably necessary to make the playoffs.
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by red army line on Feb 16, 2012 2:49 PM EST up reply actions
The link on Corsi to Objective NHL doesn’t have an independent equation to prove their baseline. They work off of Vic’s .6 for Fenwick and then adjust based on the relationship between Corsi and Fenwick. That wouldn’t be a big concern of mine (though it’s at least worth noting that they didn’t independently determine the relationship). The bigger concern is that the link to Vic’s post that allegedly establishes the .6 Fenwick relationship goes to a post that simply asserts .6 as the Fenwick relationship. So we still don’t have the equation that establishes the .6 at its heart. I think there’s probably a lot of selection bias going on so I’d really like to see that formula.
Please, call me F&B.
is there also a possession component to how often you put backstrom and ovechkin in the offensive zone? specifically, in cases we lose the draw, the puck is still in the offensive zone and even further away from our own goal. “field position” still favors the caps, and we’d still rather have our elite scorers on the ice, no? likewise, whether we win or lose a draw in the defensive zone, those are seconds of ice time that don’t need to be wasted on ovechkin, who can enter the game as the team transitions from D-zone to O-zone.
i guess what i’m struggling with: while a hockey team may only get 15 seconds of the “5-on-3” scenario from every FO win, what really matters to me is keeping AO in the O-zone for as long as possible, and keeping him out of the D-zone for as long as possible.
We need to banish the notion that you’re getting a “5-on-3” when you win a face-off. You’re not. You’re getting an elevated shot rate for about 10-15 seconds, which equals a shot or two. Given that it’s right off the face-off, I’m guessing many of these are point shots with a bunch of traffic. This is hardly a “5-on-3” situation.
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by D'ohboy on Feb 16, 2012 2:39 PM EST up reply actions 2 recs
Hardly is even too generous. You still have 5 men to cover 5 men. It’s not ideal, there could be a quality chance from it (see the Neal goal right off the draw in early January), but there’s no way it’s even close to the same as a 5 on 3. It’s really unfathomable how someone could actually equate losing a 5 on 5 draw with being on a 5 on 3.
Please, call me F&B.
by Rob Parker on Feb 16, 2012 2:46 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
As I noted in the post (emphasis added):
Prior to last night’s games, the League-wide median five-on-three shot rate was right around twice the median five-on-four shot rate at just over 90 shots per 60 minutes, or one every 40 seconds. So what are teams likely to get in that “10-15 second” window? Moreover, in a five-on-three, the offense tends to be set up in roughly the “home plate” area – nearly every shot is a scoring chance. Off a faceoff, that’s obviously not the case – the attacking team is pushed much further out. And finally, when faced with a defensive-zone draw, a coach is likely to put out his best available face-off man and defensive unit to counter the obvious territorial disadvantage as best he can. For the players taking the offensive-zone draw, they may have the positional upper-hand, but these aren’t necessarily going to be “easy” minutes.
So your “shot or two” in 10-15 seconds even likely greatly exaggerates it, and the quality of those shots (i.e. likelihood they’re scoring chances) is drastically lower than in an actual 5-on-3.
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right, i was just using “5-on-3” to symbolize all that had been discussed in the post. i understand that the advantage gained is minimal, but i’m positing that even an o-zone face-off lost is a scenario i’d like AO on the ice, and given his particular defensive game, i’d think D-zone draws are a waste of his nightly minutes.
by Natty Bumppo on Feb 16, 2012 3:34 PM EST up reply actions
I absolutely agree, but at the same time, you want Alex Ovechkin on the ice – if you wait until the rest of these guys force an icing or the opposing goalie to freeze a puck (i.e. an offensive-zone start), you’re going to end up with Ovi seeing 10 minutes of ES TOI in a game. So the choice – especially for a team that’s been shitty on possession – is often between starting Ovi in the DZone and not playing him as much. Most of the time there’s an O-zone start… it’s because Ovi just finished a shift.
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I guess my biggest issue about zone starts is that by starting Ovechkin in the offensive zone, you’re giving him a better opportunity to succeed at what he does best. In my mind, the only times he should be on a faceoff in the defensive zone is after an icing or when the Caps are on the power play.
Each player has a limited number of minutes they can play (within reason). Why you’d want to force a talented offensive player to be in the defensive zone more than he would in the regular course of play (not after a stoppage) seems silly.
100% increase!!!!
From 1 to 2.
This article is a great example of how statistics can be misleading. Zone starts matter, but not nearly to the degree that some would have you believe.
Unleash the Apathy.
Yeah, that’s the sort of math that says that African economies were growing faster than the US economy in 2005.
Hooray! Let’s move to Africa!
Please, call me F&B.
My grandfather always put hot water in ice cube trays, because “it cools faster.”
Eat, drink, and be merry! And then drink some more.
Oh man, I remember having a huge battle with some girl in my AP bio class about that.
Please, call me F&B.
In a tangential story that sort of helps illuminate the point of the article – statistics can be meaningless. In culinary school we tested the “old wives tale” about warm water making ice quicker and it actually came up to be true, but only on old style freezers that hadn’t been defrosted in a while. We theorized that the warm water melted the underlying frost a little and caused better heat transfer than the cold water sitting on top of the frost. Since most of the energy making ice is in changing its physical state not in the cooling the extra surface contact more than made up for the few extra degrees of cooling to 0. Regardless in modern frost free refrigerators the wive’s tale is bunk.
by sailchef1 on Feb 16, 2012 4:47 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs


































