Page 3-4 Playoff: Sweden and Norway: do red rocks win more often than yellow rocks?

Preparing for today's game, I looked at the scoreboard and saw that Norway has the hammer. I couldn't figure out what was going on, why Sweden didn't have the hammer, so I asked the statisticians for CCA what was going on.

I turns out Sweden had the choice. But they decided they wanted the red rocks more than they wanted the hammer. Huh? Well, we were informed, the red rocks win more.

Alan and I were skeptical. So the statisticians ran off the data for us. No foolin' What a shock: in the 66 games of the round robin, 43 games were won with the red rocks and 23 games were won with yellow rocks! I don't think the powerful teams had the red rocks more often, so it is quite likely that this is both a statistically significant difference and, more importantly, an important difference for making the decision.

I'm astounded. I would have thought that giving up the hammer would be foolish and that preference for red rocks is just a silly superstition. I'm much more confused, now, and much more willing to look into what is going on.

We need a SHRCC grant to study this question!!!

[update] The father of Kraupp (3rd, SW) is sitting next to us on the media bench. He says that's not at all what happened. His explanation is that SW and NO were tied at 7-4 in the round robinm and because NO defeated SW in their round robin game, NO won the hammer, so then SW chose the red rocks.

But that doesn't refute the result concerning red rocks. We still need the grant!