Monthly Archives: October 2010

Politics, Science and Edumacation, Sports, Taxes and Spending, The Nanny State

Friday Linkorama

Non-political links:

  • Yeah, I love archeology.
  • Really? What kind of busy body are you?
  • I love it when facts trump common wisdom. Freakonomics dismantles the idea that steroid testing is why run-scoring is down. One of the things I didn’t like about Ken Burns’ Tenth Inning was that it accepted as gospel the idea that steroids produced the recent offensive explosion.
  • “Safety” does not make us safe.

    • Political Links:

  • I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t like Dick Blumenthal. Watch here as Linda McMahon — of the WWE — cleans his clock on how jobs are created. She says it better in ten seconds than he does in almost two minutes of burbling.
  • Seems like Lou Dobbs is every kind of hypocrite.
  • You’re Full of It Watch: the anti-Prop 19ers.
  • So what do you do when your Keynesian economic plan has failed? Blame foreigners.
  • Ah, redevelopment. What a scam.
  • You know, I remember when “binge drinking” actually meant binge drinking, not just drinking.
    • Sports

    Coach? What Coach

    In reading the account of the comedy of errors that ending the Tennessee-LSU game, I was struck by this:

    LSU coach Les Miles had already tossed his headset aside, cutting him off from communication with offensive coordinator Gary Crowton, while he sought out an official on the field to see what the flag was for.

    “I had to call a play because I had nobody to talk to,” Miles said.

    Have we gotten to the point where it’s unusual for a head coach to call a play?

    Sports

    The Excitement Index, 2010 Edition

    A few years ago, I developed a very simple system for measuring how exciting a baseball post-season is.

    I wanted to check just how boring 2007 was turning out so I devised a quick and dirty way to rank the post-seasons. It works like this:

    Every game played gets 1 point.

    Each game get 0.2 extra points for a lead change or tie. So tonight the Sox led 1-0. The Tribe tied it. Then the Sox took the lead for good. 0.4 points. Now if the Tribe had scored a run in the 1st and another in the second, that would have been 0.4 points; but had they taken the lead with two in the 1st, that would have only been 0.2 points. The system rewards a little drawing out of the game.

    Extra innings or a last at-bat victory is worth an extra 0.5 points.
    Finally, the game is credited with 1/(margin of victory). So a 1-run game gets an extra point. A five-run game only gets 0.2 points.

    It’s arbitary, I know. It gives the same weight to an 18-inning game as a 10-inning game. It weights early rallies as much as late ones. It doesn’t account for runners left on base, which is why Game 7 of the 1991 World Series comes in at only 2.50. It weights an exciting game one as much as an exciting game seven. It doesn’t care if a team has come back from being down 3-0.

    In other words, it’s quick and dirty.

    I’m not really looking to rank the greatest game in baseball history. What I’m looking for are series — and post-seasons full of series — that go the distance with lots of exciting close games. And I don’t have the computer resources to do a more thorough job. This one can be calculated just by looking at the line score.

    After tonight, I would add that it doesn’t take into account no-hitters.

    I’ve now expanded the database to go all the way back to 1976. A few highlights:

  • To give you a sense of scale. The average games scores 1.9 points. The average 5-games series scores 7.2. The average 7-game series 10.8. The average modern post-season scores 60 points.
  • The most exciting post-season in history was 2003, which came in at a whopping 74.1 points. You may remember this one as the year both the Red Sox and Cubs were five outs away from a pennant and blew it. Pro-rated, however, the 1991 post-season comes in slightly better (40.2 points pro-rated to 78.5). That was the year the Braves came from nowhere to take the Pirates and then the Twins to seven games.
  • The most boring post-season, as I noted above, was 2007. Five series sweeps and a surprisingly dull 7-game ALCS. It game in at 47.6.
  • The most exciting 7-game series was the 1991 World Series (17.2). As a survivor of that, who watched the greatest Cinderella team ever lose a 7-game heart-breaker, I can vouch for that one. Coming in second is the 2001 World Series (16.1).
  • The dullest 7-game series was 1989’s blowout of San Francisco by Oakland in which the Giants never took a lead. It scored a pathetic 5.4.
  • The most exciting 5-game series was 1980’s Philadelphia-Houston epic ALCS which featured four extra-inning game. At 13.5, it outdid most 7-game series.
  • The most boring 5-gamer was St. Louis blowing out San Diego in the 2005 NLDS. There have been games that have scored better than the 3.9 the whole series did.
  • The most-exciting game, at a whopping 4.1, was game two of the 1997 NLDS. Huh? That game featured 8 ties or lead changes and was won on a walk-off single by Moises Alou. I’m inclined to think this a quirk of the system. Even though game seven of the 2001 world series only score 3.3, I would give that the nod as the greatest game.
  • There are many candidates for boring games. Technically, game seven of the 1996 NLCS scored the lowest (1.06). But the Braves’ 15-0 victory capped a comeback from a 1-3 series deficit. Game five of that series (a 14-0 blowout, 1.07 in the system) is another candidate, as is game one of the World Series that year. But I would probably go with game one of the 2005 ALDS (1.08), Chicago’s 14-2 blowout of Boston.

    • We’ll see how this season shapes up.

    Cool Stuff, Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Tuesday Linkorama

    Non-political Links:

  • View of a real estate market. The Big Picture is such a wonderful website.
  • Volcano power. I do worry, however, about the potential for a man-made natural disaster.
  • The net worth of our Presidents. I find the historical trends fascinating. Basically, they were all rich until the mid-19th century, then became rich again in the mid-20th.
  • Super Wi!

    • Political Links

  • America’s legal system: damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
  • I am Mike’s total lack of surprise.
  • Amazing: texting bans increase texting accidents.
    • Politics

    Statistical Malpractice Watch

    I’ve seen the claim that we have troops in 156 countries in numerous places, most recently Radley Balko’s awesome blog. But I have to take some issue with it. From my comments:

    Not to [get] too deep into this, but that map of 156 countries with US troops looks very suspicious to me, and not just because their color coding is garbage — Europe is white while other countries are two tones.

    I’ve looked over the CDI website and found the map source (http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/history/hst0609.pdf). Many of those 156 countries have single-digit or double-digit US personnel in them. For example, they list almost all countries in Africa, but only Djibouti has a significant presence. If you’re talking 10,000 or more, the list is Germany, Italy, UK, Japan, South Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq.

    What’s the comparison? Do the UK or China have similar “deployments”? Are these military personnel assigned to embassies? Maybe it’s just me, but having two military personnel stationed in Antigua does not seems like an extension of our Empire.

    I don’t disagree that we should pare down our foreign involvements. But let’s have an honest debate. The US is not occupying 3/4 of the world.