Just yesterday the Washington Post got it wrong. In their Sports section there was a piece on Iowa’s prospects for the coming season.
The claim: “The law of averages says Iowa will pay the price this season for escaping so many games last year with close wins.”
The Problem: The implication is that because Iowa won so many close games last year they will not be able to win so many close games this year.
The law of averages makes no such claims. It simply states that in the long run if winning a lot of close games is uncommon it won’t happen very often. It makes no claims about the relationship between what happen one year and what happens the following year.
What the paper did was equivalent to claiming that flipping a coin and getting heads will increase the chance of getting tails the next time, or that rolling a pair of dice and throwing an eleven makes it more likely that you will get a lower roll next time. In reality you are likely to get a lower roll the next time simply because the probability of getting an eleven or twelve is not very high on any roll of the dice.