andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1419 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Eric Tassone writes: Probably not blog-worthy/blog-appropriate, but have you heard Bill James discussing the Sandusky & Paterno stuff? I think you discussed once his stance on the Dowd Report, and this seems to be from the same part of his personality—which goes beyond contrarian . . . I have in fact blogged on James ( many times ) and on Paterno , so yes I think this is blogworthy. On the other hand, most readers of this blog probably don’t care about baseball, football, or William James, so I’ll put the rest below the fold. What is legendary baseball statistician Bill James doing, defending the crime-coverups of legendary coach Joe Paterno? As I wrote in my earlier blog on Paterno, it isn’t always easy to do the right thing, and I have no idea if I’d behave any better if I were in such a situation. The characteristics of a good coach do not necessarily provide what it takes to make good decisions off the field. In this sense even more of the blame should go
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1 What is legendary baseball statistician Bill James doing, defending the crime-coverups of legendary coach Joe Paterno? [sent-7, score-0.263]
2 people who are responsible for it are the media That’s just goofy. [sent-28, score-0.131]
3 To say that the media were responsible for Paterno’s behavior is like saying that, if I go out and slug someone with my NSF-funded Kaypro , that it’s the NSF’s fault for enabling me. [sent-29, score-0.131]
4 To put it another way: it may very well be that, without the support of the press, Paterno wouldn’t have had the power that allowed him to deflect criminal investigations. [sent-30, score-0.081]
5 ” The whole blame-the-media thing seems to be based on the idea that the media created the Paterno monster and so is to blame, but now James is claiming that Paterno wasn’t powerful at all. [sent-34, score-0.234]
6 In his writings, Bill James has no problem agreeing with the herd if he thinks the herd is right. [sent-38, score-0.108]
7 He’s moved from defending Pete Rose and Mark McGwire to defending Joe Paterno. [sent-43, score-0.114]
8 One more thing is James’s interest in sports history. [sent-46, score-0.075]
9 Back 50 or 100 years ago, baseball was run by a bunch of mix of moralists and tough guys, and it’s easy to imagine all sorts of criminal behavior being shielded by the old boys’ network. [sent-47, score-0.134]
10 So maybe James feels that modern sports figures should due held to the same standards that we apply to various old-timers. [sent-49, score-0.074]
11 William James Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune. [sent-62, score-0.077]
12 William James Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action. [sent-65, score-0.109]
13 William James An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible. [sent-66, score-0.07]
14 Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune. [sent-68, score-0.077]
15 William James Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. [sent-72, score-0.1]
16 William James I will act as if what I do makes a difference. [sent-76, score-0.097]
17 William James If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. [sent-78, score-0.07]
18 And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true. [sent-84, score-0.098]
19 William James No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. [sent-87, score-0.233]
20 William James Or maybe we should end with this one: It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again. [sent-90, score-0.079]
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Introduction: Eric Tassone writes: Probably not blog-worthy/blog-appropriate, but have you heard Bill James discussing the Sandusky & Paterno stuff? I think you discussed once his stance on the Dowd Report, and this seems to be from the same part of his personality—which goes beyond contrarian . . . I have in fact blogged on James ( many times ) and on Paterno , so yes I think this is blogworthy. On the other hand, most readers of this blog probably don’t care about baseball, football, or William James, so I’ll put the rest below the fold. What is legendary baseball statistician Bill James doing, defending the crime-coverups of legendary coach Joe Paterno? As I wrote in my earlier blog on Paterno, it isn’t always easy to do the right thing, and I have no idea if I’d behave any better if I were in such a situation. The characteristics of a good coach do not necessarily provide what it takes to make good decisions off the field. In this sense even more of the blame should go
Introduction: During our discussion of estimates of teacher performance, Steve Sailer wrote : I suspect we’re going to take years to work the kinks out of overall rating systems. By way of analogy, Bill James kicked off the modern era of baseball statistics analysis around 1975. But he stuck to doing smaller scale analyses and avoided trying to build one giant overall model for rating players. In contrast, other analysts such as Pete Palmer rushed into building overall ranking systems, such as his 1984 book, but they tended to generate curious results such as the greatness of Roy Smalley Jr.. James held off until 1999 before unveiling his win share model for overall rankings. I remember looking at Pete Palmer’s book many years ago and being disappointed that he did everything through his Linear Weights formula. A hit is worth X, a walk is worth Y, etc. Some of this is good–it’s presumably an improvement on counting walks as 0 or 1 hits, also an improvement on counting doubles and triples a
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Introduction: Ben Lindbergh invited me to write an article for Baseball Prospectus. I first sent him this item on the differences between baseball and politics but he said it was too political for them. I then sent him this review of a book on baseball’s greatest fielders but he said they already had someone slotted to review that book. Then I sent him some reflections on the great Bill James and he published it ! If anybody out there knows Bill James, please send this on to him: I have some questions at the end that I’m curious about. Here’s how it begins: I read my first Bill James book in 1984, took my first statistics class in 1985, and began graduate study in statistics the next year. Besides giving me the opportunity to study with the best applied statistician of the late 20th century (Don Rubin) and the best theoretical statistician of the early 21st (Xiao-Li Meng), going to graduate school at Harvard in 1986 gave me the opportunity to sit in a basement room one evening that
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Introduction: A couple months ago, in discussing Charles Murray’s argument that America’s social leaders should “preach what they practice” (Murray argues that they—we!—tend to lead good lives of hard work and moderation but are all too tolerant of antisocial and unproductive behavior among the lower classes), I wrote : Murray does not consider the case of Joe Paterno, but in many ways the Penn State football coach fits his story well. Paterno was said to live an exemplary personal and professional life, combining traditional morality with football success—but, by his actions, he showed little concern about the morality of his players and coaches. At a professional level, Paterno rose higher and higher, and in his personal life he was a responsible adult. But he had an increasing disconnect with the real world, to the extent that horrible crimes were occurring nearby (in the physical and social senses) but he was completely insulated from the consequences for many years. Paterno’s story is s
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Introduction: Eric Tassone writes: Probably not blog-worthy/blog-appropriate, but have you heard Bill James discussing the Sandusky & Paterno stuff? I think you discussed once his stance on the Dowd Report, and this seems to be from the same part of his personality—which goes beyond contrarian . . . I have in fact blogged on James ( many times ) and on Paterno , so yes I think this is blogworthy. On the other hand, most readers of this blog probably don’t care about baseball, football, or William James, so I’ll put the rest below the fold. What is legendary baseball statistician Bill James doing, defending the crime-coverups of legendary coach Joe Paterno? As I wrote in my earlier blog on Paterno, it isn’t always easy to do the right thing, and I have no idea if I’d behave any better if I were in such a situation. The characteristics of a good coach do not necessarily provide what it takes to make good decisions off the field. In this sense even more of the blame should go
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Introduction: I was recently rereading and enjoying Bill James’s Historical Baseball Abstract (the second edition, from 2001). But even the Master is not perfect. Here he is, in the context of the all-time 20th-greatest shortstop (in his reckoning): Are athletes special people? In general, no, but occasionally, yes. Johnny Pesky at 75 was trim, youthful, optimistic, and practically exploding with energy. You rarely meet anybody like that who isn’t an ex-athlete–and that makes athletes seem special. [italics in the original] Hey, I’ve met 75-year-olds like that–and none of them are ex-athletes! That’s probably because I don’t know a lot of ex-athletes. But Bill James . . . he knows a lot of athletes. He went to the bathroom with Tim Raines once! The most I can say is that I saw Rickey Henderson steal a couple bases when he was playing against the Orioles once. Cognitive psychologists talk about the base-rate fallacy , which is the mistake of estimating probabilities without accou
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Introduction: From Dan Goldstein : Pretty good, but really the pie chart should be three-dimensional, shown at an angle, and with one or two of the slices popping out. P.S. They seemed to have placed a link for the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. That book’s ok, but what I was really recommending were his Abstracts from 1982-1986, which are something else entirely.
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Introduction: Eric Tassone writes: Probably not blog-worthy/blog-appropriate, but have you heard Bill James discussing the Sandusky & Paterno stuff? I think you discussed once his stance on the Dowd Report, and this seems to be from the same part of his personality—which goes beyond contrarian . . . I have in fact blogged on James ( many times ) and on Paterno , so yes I think this is blogworthy. On the other hand, most readers of this blog probably don’t care about baseball, football, or William James, so I’ll put the rest below the fold. What is legendary baseball statistician Bill James doing, defending the crime-coverups of legendary coach Joe Paterno? As I wrote in my earlier blog on Paterno, it isn’t always easy to do the right thing, and I have no idea if I’d behave any better if I were in such a situation. The characteristics of a good coach do not necessarily provide what it takes to make good decisions off the field. In this sense even more of the blame should go
Introduction: Tyler Cowen hypothesizes a “dogmatism portfolio” or a “quota of dogmatism”: in his words, If you’re very dogmatic in one area, you may be less dogmatic in others. OK, well “may be” is pretty vague. There’s not really anything to disagree with, yet. But then Cowen continues: There’s a lesson here. If you wish to be a more open-minded thinker, adhere to some extreme and perhaps unreasonable fandoms, the more firmly believed the better and the more obscure the area the better. This will help fulfill your dogmatism quota, yet without much skewing your more important beliefs. He seems to be making a testable prediction here, that levels of dogmatism on two randomly chosen issues should be negatively correlated. I guess I should call this “almost testable,” as it still requires an issue-by-issue measure of dogmatism. (Is it dogmatic to believe that there was this guy called Jesus who walked on water . . . or is it dogmatic to say that Jesus didn’t walk on water and
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Introduction: According to a New York Times article , cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have a new theory about rational argument: humans didn’t develop it in order to learn about the world, we developed it in order to win arguments with other people. “It was a purely social phenomenon. It evolved to help us convince others and to be careful when others try to convince us.” Based on the NYT article, it seems that Mercier and Sperber are basically flipping around the traditional argument, which is that humans learned to reason about the world, albeit imperfectly, and learned to use language to convey that reasoning to others. These guys would suggest that it’s the other way around: we learned to argue with others, and this has gradually led to the ability to actually make (and recognize) sound arguments, but only indirectly. The article says “”At least in some cultural contexts, this results in a kind of arms race towards greater sophistication in the production and evaluation o
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Introduction: Tyler Cowen points to this news article by Lauren Sandler: Stunningly, the postponement of marriage and parenting — the factors that shrink the birth rate — is the very best predictor of a person’s politics in the United States, over even income and education levels, a Belgian demographer named Ron Lesthaeghe [and coauthor Lisa Neidert] has discovered . Larger family size in America correlates to early marriage and childbirth, lower women’s employment, and opposition to gay rights — all social factors that lead voters to see red. All the analysis in the linked paper is at the state and county level. That’s fine but this is not going to tell you what is a “predictor of a person’s politics.” Cowen labels his post “Sentences to ponder,” and what I want to ponder is that people are so quick to jump from aggregate to individual patterns. And, yes, I know that aggregate patterns are related to individual patterns but they’re not the same. In particular, from the evidence we’
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Introduction: This article by Thomas Crag, at Copenhagenize, is marred by reliance on old data, but it’s so full of informative graphical displays — most of them not made by the author, I think — that it’s hard to pick just one. But here ya go. This figure shows fatalities (among cyclists) versus distance cycled, with a point for each year…unfortunately ending in way back in 1998, but still: This is a good alternative to the more common choice for this sort of plot, which would be overlaying curves of fatalities vs time and distance cycled vs time. The article also explicitly discusses the fact, previously discussed on this blog , that it’s misleading, to the point of being wrong in most contexts, to compare the safety of walking vs cycling vs driving by looking at the casualty or fatality rate per kilometer . Often, as in this article, the question of interest is something like, if more people switched from driving to cycling, how many more or fewer people would die? Obviously, if peo
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