By now everyone has seen the clip of Susan Boyle bringing down the house on Britain's Got Talent. Who would have thought that the never-been-kissed old crazy cat lady (not being derogatory, she actually says that she's never been kissed...and has a cat) like the one who works the checkout line at my grocery store would have a voice like that? They also totally make her seem like she's a pig the way they immediately cut to her stuffing a sandwich in her mouth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY (can't embed, sorry)
Now I wish that's what American Idol was like. I know that there's an age limit and the whole goal is to find someone who looks like a rock star as much as they sound like one, but frankly, I'm tired of watching angsty douchebags in tight leather pants every week who once had record deals that didn't pan out because, surprise...they're just not good at making music when they have to write the words themselves. I thought that the appeal of the show was that you'd be surprised by ordinary people who you really didn't expect to have an ounce of talent but actually had a lot. Like crazy cat lady.
So I think that the show is pretty much stagnating. I only used to watch that show for the weirdos anyway, but now they'll kill themselves if you criticize them, apparently, so even that's out of the question.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Small Sample Size Alert!
From the title of this post, you're probably guessing that I'm going to spend the entire thing hating on Emilio Bonifacio. Not true. I'm only going to spend half of the post hating on him, if even that much.
This guy has spent the past two years getting passed around the league like a case of herpes at the University of South Carolina and is about equally as physically attractive. He strikes out twice as much as he walks, and prior to this season had stolen all of 7 bases in almost 200 major league at-bats...out of 12 attempts! His career on-base percentage was exactly .300 coming into 2009.
There's a funny phenomenon in psychology called the anchoring heuristic, where your initial information becomes the "anchor" and is subsequently very difficult to change. It's why first impressions are so important. If Bonifacio started out hitting .150 the first couple of weeks and then hit .471 or whatever at the end of the season, nobody would bat an eyelash. He's a .150 hitter who had one fluke week, right? Well when he hits .150 next week, you'll be tempted to think of that as the fluke, when the fluke was really last week. He was just fortunate to have his best week of the season happen to come at the very beginning.
But whatever. I don't look down on anyone who grabbed him. Life is a game of risk and reward, and who knows? But let's not forget the lesson of Chris Shelton in 2006. The odds aren't in your favor.
This guy has spent the past two years getting passed around the league like a case of herpes at the University of South Carolina and is about equally as physically attractive. He strikes out twice as much as he walks, and prior to this season had stolen all of 7 bases in almost 200 major league at-bats...out of 12 attempts! His career on-base percentage was exactly .300 coming into 2009.
There's a funny phenomenon in psychology called the anchoring heuristic, where your initial information becomes the "anchor" and is subsequently very difficult to change. It's why first impressions are so important. If Bonifacio started out hitting .150 the first couple of weeks and then hit .471 or whatever at the end of the season, nobody would bat an eyelash. He's a .150 hitter who had one fluke week, right? Well when he hits .150 next week, you'll be tempted to think of that as the fluke, when the fluke was really last week. He was just fortunate to have his best week of the season happen to come at the very beginning.
But whatever. I don't look down on anyone who grabbed him. Life is a game of risk and reward, and who knows? But let's not forget the lesson of Chris Shelton in 2006. The odds aren't in your favor.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Gambler's Fallacy Revisited
A lot of times when evaluating baseball players, people are tempted to think that if a player struggles mightily in the first half (below their career averages), then in the second half, in order to reach those career averages, the player will naturally perform far above the norm. So for example, if a career .300 hitter bats .200 over the first half of the season, it is very tempting to think that he’ll hit .400 over the second half of the season so that it all averages out to .300 over the whole year.
Unfortunately, as the fantasy baseball articles invariably point out every all-star break, that is not what you should expect. It’s a variation of the Gambler’s Fallacy—if you flip a coin and get ten heads in a row, then a lot of people would expect the eleventh flip to be tails because it’s “due.” But it’s easy to see that no matter what’s happened in the past, that eleventh flip is still 50-50. The twelfth flip is still 50-50. You could get 99 heads in a row and the hundredth flip is still 50-50. The past doesn’t affect the future probability at all. In the same way, if a .300 batter bats .200 in the first half, he’s not going to bat .400 in the second half—he’ll bat .300 in the second half.
Mathematically, the principle is sound, but what the fantasy baseball writers ignore is that unlike a coin flip, baseball performance is NOT random. I think one could speculate that a player may indeed exceed his career averages after a period of struggling because his surroundings adapt to that performance. For example, perhaps if a player struggles for a long time, he gets moved down in the order where pitchers are not as careful with him (such as right in front of the pitcher’s batting slot). Or perhaps pitchers are simply not as careful because due to the subpar half-season, he is not perceived as a threat anymore. I don’t have the time or the wherewithal to do a proper analysis, but my impression is that there are so many factors that it is disingenuous to reduce it to a simple Gambler’s Fallacy.
Unfortunately, as the fantasy baseball articles invariably point out every all-star break, that is not what you should expect. It’s a variation of the Gambler’s Fallacy—if you flip a coin and get ten heads in a row, then a lot of people would expect the eleventh flip to be tails because it’s “due.” But it’s easy to see that no matter what’s happened in the past, that eleventh flip is still 50-50. The twelfth flip is still 50-50. You could get 99 heads in a row and the hundredth flip is still 50-50. The past doesn’t affect the future probability at all. In the same way, if a .300 batter bats .200 in the first half, he’s not going to bat .400 in the second half—he’ll bat .300 in the second half.
Mathematically, the principle is sound, but what the fantasy baseball writers ignore is that unlike a coin flip, baseball performance is NOT random. I think one could speculate that a player may indeed exceed his career averages after a period of struggling because his surroundings adapt to that performance. For example, perhaps if a player struggles for a long time, he gets moved down in the order where pitchers are not as careful with him (such as right in front of the pitcher’s batting slot). Or perhaps pitchers are simply not as careful because due to the subpar half-season, he is not perceived as a threat anymore. I don’t have the time or the wherewithal to do a proper analysis, but my impression is that there are so many factors that it is disingenuous to reduce it to a simple Gambler’s Fallacy.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Phrases Which Irk Me
Yes, it's no secret that certain phrases just grind my gears. The two offenders I heard today:
- "No offense, but...": Ironically, the way a smug asshole informs you that he's about to offend you is that he prefaces it with the claim that he means no offense. With that said, I have NEVER heard anyone say "no offense" before a statement and actually mean it.
- "I got pregnant": I know that this is the way you express the thought, so whatever. But "got" is just so passive. How did the statement become so passive? It sounds like the woman was sitting at home doing crossword puzzles after her evening prayers and then suddenly a holy gob of semen materialized in her unsuspecting uterus. Instead of "I got pregnant" it would be much more accurate to say, "I opened my legs and let a guy blow his load inside me and one of his little swimmers slipped past my goalie and now I'm throwing up in the morning."
- "No offense, but...": Ironically, the way a smug asshole informs you that he's about to offend you is that he prefaces it with the claim that he means no offense. With that said, I have NEVER heard anyone say "no offense" before a statement and actually mean it.
- "I got pregnant": I know that this is the way you express the thought, so whatever. But "got" is just so passive. How did the statement become so passive? It sounds like the woman was sitting at home doing crossword puzzles after her evening prayers and then suddenly a holy gob of semen materialized in her unsuspecting uterus. Instead of "I got pregnant" it would be much more accurate to say, "I opened my legs and let a guy blow his load inside me and one of his little swimmers slipped past my goalie and now I'm throwing up in the morning."
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
And at center, number 42...
Unfortunately, Morehead State beat Alabama State in today's play-in game, which means that we will not be seeing any more of ASU's center, Grlenntys Chief Kickingstallionsims. As tempted as you are to figure that there must be only one Grylenntys Chief Kickingstallionsims in the entire world, you would be wrong! There is another, and it's his dad. You'd think that the one person who would know about the difficulty of having a name like that would want to spare his son the same trauma, but I guess not. Then again, it's not as bad as "Eugene."
His mom's name is Barbara Paulson, if you're wondering. I know I was.
His mom's name is Barbara Paulson, if you're wondering. I know I was.
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