I was a bit sorry to see the Yankees eliminated from the baseball playoffs Thursday night. I used to root against the Yankees but I eventually realized that I enjoy listening to their games on the radio and when they lose in the playoffs they aren't on anymore. Also I prefer warm weather and associate it with the baseball season. So this is a reminder that winter is coming.
I don't have much to say about the games except to note that as usual the commentators are ignoring the importance of luck. The Yankees outscored the Tigers in the series 28 to 17 but lost 3 games to 2 because they lost all the close games while winning the blowouts. This is mostly likely explained as due to bad luck and not a lack of heart or character.
Raw data: A cautionary tale
7 hours ago
Yes luck is underrated. Peoples' tendency to see patterns where there is no pattern is one of the reasons. In the baseball context, even announcers who realize this also feel pressured to appear as though they are providing insight, and realize that the typical baseball fan wouldn't find the endless refrain "it's random" terribly insightful.
ReplyDeleteLeonard Mlodinow probably has no future as a baseball color man. He has a good recent book out on probability wherein he says something like "decisions should be judged based on the spectrum of outcomes they were likely to have produced, rather than the single outcome which they did in fact produce."