Reading the Ted Wells Report: Exponent report

There are various parts of the report which are used by the NFL to make their case.  They seem to rely more than anything else on the text messages.  This is odd to me, as the text messages are not, in fact, incriminating.  Embarrassing?  Certainly.  Consistent with guilt?  Maybe.  There are more problems with that than people are admitting.  Damning?  Hardly At some point I may go over that, but I think it's a better use of my time to go over the Exponent appendix, which makes the case that the Wells report and the suspensions rely upon.  It should be clear here that without the Exponent report, there is no evidence of any wrongdoing.  Without evidence that the balls were actually deflated, who cares what text messages a couple locker room attendants sent to each other?

The main problem with the Exponent report is that a lot of information is missing.  Where we should be using carefully recorded air pressures, we rely more upon half-rememberances, including on the question of which gauge was actually used to measure the air pressures.

A second issue that I find problematic is that it presumes uniformity to conditions that simply isn't reasonable to assume.  It also fails to consider the possibility that using a football playing a football game in the NFL might tend to lead to loss of air pressure.

Anyway, let's start.

The NFL's science-free smear campaign

So apparently the NFL has decided that they cheaty cheater New England Cheatriots have been cheating again, deflating footballs during games in order to gain some sort of advantage.  There are several problems with their campaign of accusation, though:

1. In cold weather, footballs lose air pressure.  (This is a consequence of what is known as Guy-Lassac's law from physics.)
2. Nobody on the team will admit to having done this.
3. Apparently they have no videos showing this happening.
4. It's not clear who had an opportunity to do this.
5. At least nominally, the balls were in the custody of the game officials.