Kathy Kmonicek/Associated Press
GREENSBORO, N.C. — As advanced statistical analysis and its attendant new technology continue to reshape how sports are understood, watched and even played — when to punt on fourth down in football, where to position a baseball team’s infielders and how to build a winning basketball team — these new numbers also create a vexing problem:
How to account for what complex algorithms cannot explain.
The thirst for information is such that one essential set of college basketball data that will help determine the field for this month’s N.C.A.A. tournament, Ken Pomeroy’s eponymous KenPom ratings, includes a metric to shed light on when things do not actually go by the numbers.