Subtlety
Sometimes a team can appear to have a mathematical chance to win even though they have actually been eliminated already, due to scheduling. In this Major League Baseball scenario, there are three games remaining in the season. Teams A, B and C are assumed to be eligible only for the division championship; teams with better records in other divisions have already clinched the two available "wild card" spots:
| Team | Wins | Losses |
| A | 87 | 72 |
| B | 87 | 72 |
| C | 85 | 74 |
If Team C were to win all three remaining games, it would finish at 88-74, and if both Teams A and B were to lose their three remaining games, they would finish at 87-75, which would make Team C the division winner. However if Teams A and B are playing against each other in the final weekend (in a 3 game series), it would be impossible for both teams to lose the three remaining games. One of them will win at least two games and thereby clinch the division title with a record of either 90-72 or 89-73. The more direct consequence of this situation is that it is also not possible for Teams A and B to finish in a tie with each other, and Team C can't win the division.
Read more about this topic: Magic Number (sports)
Famous quotes containing the word subtlety:
“The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“After all anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high. Anybody is as there is wind or no wind there. That is what makes a people, makes their kind of looks, their kind of thinking, their subtlety and their stupidity, and their eating and their drinking and their language.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped,
some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and
I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)