Category Archives: Science

OTHER THAN THAT, HOW DID YOU LIKE THE BOOK?

OTHER THAN THAT, HOW DID YOU LIKE THE BOOK? Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a new book out which follows up on his earlier books, FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS and THE BLACK SWAN. Since I have posted on them so often, it’s … Continue reading

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HOW TO RIG STATISTICAL EXPERIMENTS.

HOW TO RIG STATISTICAL EXPERIMENTS. Christopher Shea had an article in the December Atlantic about a psychologist who showed how psychologists can (and some do) rig the results of their experiments to make them publishable. Uri Simonsohn, with three colleagues, … Continue reading

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DECIDING TO MAKE LES MIS—THE MOVIE.

DECIDING TO MAKE LES MIS—THE MOVIE. I can see why statistical models were included in the decisionmaking for Les Mis—the Movie. Although the theater version had a great success, the decision to make LES MIS—the Movie must have been difficult. … Continue reading

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NATE SILVER HAS BECOME A VERB.

NATE SILVER HAS BECOME A VERB. Nick and I used to look at Nate Silver’s PECOTA projections in Baseball Prospectus when we were making decisions about fantasy baseball players. Now, here is an article by Stephen Galloway in the Hollywood … Continue reading

Posted in Baseball, Politics, Science, Sports | 1 Comment

PRECISE DATA FOR A SINGLE PITCH.

PRECISE DATA FOR A SINGLE PITCH. Alan Nathan’s analysis of the physics of a single pitch and line drive builds on an amazing amount of data that is now available for baseball games. Nathan knows that on the pitch that … Continue reading

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RARE EVENTS—HITTING A BASEBALL THREE TIMES WITH ONE SWING.

RARE EVENTS—HITTING A BASEBALL THREE TIMES WITH ONE SWING. Matt Adams of the Southside Showdown blog called Nick’s attention to this post at the Physics of Baseball blog explaining what seems to me the most remarkable play of the 2012 … Continue reading

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WHY POKER PLAYERS AND SPORTS FANS MAKE BETTER PREDICTIONS.

WHY POKER PLAYERS AND SPORTS FANS MAKE BETTER PREDICTIONS. Nate Silver thinks that the more experience we have with low-probabilty events, the easier it is to appreciate that low-probability events can occur. He says that he has an advantage in … Continue reading

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PROBABILITY IS ABOUT THE BELIEF THAT THERE ARE ALTERNATIVE OUTCOMES.

PROBABILITY IS ABOUT THE BELIEF THAT THERE ARE ALTERNATIVE OUTCOMES. In FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS, Taleb says: “…probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause or motive.”

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STATISTICS—THE COURSE THAT SHOULD BE REQUIRED.

STATISTICS—THE COURSE THAT SHOULD BE REQUIRED. Meyer Burstein used to tell his economics students that the one course that should be required in college was statistics. My nephew Andrew Schaefer (a mathematics professor) has told me that he believes that … Continue reading

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WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT EARTHQUAKES.

WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT EARTHQUAKES. I reacted to the discovery that not assigning hurricane status to a storm can mislead somebody like me in part because of something I just read in Nate Silver’s THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE: … Continue reading

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