Hello. Beatoffploppers here, resident statistician. When some of the media were asking me about the statistical differences between Georgia and Auburn the other day, they noted how much better Georgia's offense was statistically than Auburn's.

Being the statistical amoeba that I am, I decided to statistically analyze Georgia and Auburn over the course of the season, looking at total offense, total defense, time of possession, and penalty yards.

Regression/Correlation analysis was used to compare the means between Georgia and Auburn at the α=0.05 significance level. Any p-values under the α=0.05 threshold indicate a statistically significant difference in the means of the category. Please also note that the sample size is 9 (amount of games) and that time of possession is rounded to the nearest minute. The following table is what I found:

Interestingly, the only statistically significant aspect of Georgia and Auburn was on defense generating a p-value of 0.08. However, despite large mean differences on total offense, from a true statistical perspective, Georgia and Auburn are not significantly different (p-value of 0.282). This could largely be due to the sample size of 9 games, which makes it hard to really extrapolate any significant differences.

Take away from this analysis: 1) the game will come down to which team plays better defense, as Georgia has been significantly better than Auburn. 2) The eyeball test tells us that Georgia has been significantly better on offense than Auburn, despite the statistical analysis. So, statistics may not mean everything, especially in a rivalry game.

~Eyes without a Face