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Adjusted plus-minus ratings, etc.
David Park sent this along. I haven't really been following basketball statistics lately, but some of you might find it interesting....
Survey of blog readers
Stephen Kershaw writes:...
News flash: Nascar drivers support Republicans
Allen Hurlbert writes: I saw your 538 post [on the partisan allegiances of sports fans] and it reminded me of some playful data analysis I [Hurlbert] did a couple months ago based on NewsMeat.com's compilation of sports celebrity campaign contributions....
You can't win for losing
Devin Pope writes: I wanted to send you an updated version of Jonah Berger and my basketball paper that shows that teams that are losing at halftime win more often than expected. This new version is much improved. It has...
Stats for kids
David Afshartous writes: I recall you had a post awhile back RE the difficulty kids have excelling in statistics versus mathematics, e.g., there are few statistics prodigies yet many mathematics prodigies. In any event, my 10 year old nephew was...
Kids today . . . I don't understand 'em
I was getting my haircut today, and the TV in the barbershop was set to some kids' channel that was featuring a show about some weird form of basketball where the players can bounce on a trampoline on the way...
The total weight limit for football teams
David Friedman suggests that, instead of limiting a football team to 11 men, you allow the team as many men on the field as they'd like, with the constraint that their total weight be below some 2400 pounds. It's an...
Tennis: controversy about the effect of winning the first set tiebreaker
The other day I mentioned this article by Lionel Page that found a momentum effect in tennis matches; more specifically: "winning the first set has a significant and strong effect on the result of the second set. A player who...
More on the question of whether it's better to be one point behind at halftime
Following my skeptical discussion of their article on the probability of a college basketball team winning after ahead or behind by one point at halftime, Jonah Berger and Devin Pope sent me a long and polite email (with graph attached!)...
Basketball news: No, I don't think that it's better to be down by one point than up by one point at halftime. Or, to put it in statistical terms, 1.3% (with a standard error of 2%) is not the same as 7.7%
John Shonder pointed me to this discussion by Justin Wolfers of this article by Jonah Berger and Devin Pope, who write: In general, the further individuals, groups, and teams are ahead of their opponents in competition, the more likely they...
Basketball bracket tips
I got this bit of spam in the email but it's actually sort of cool, would be an excellent topic for discussion in an intro stat class or a Bayesian class: MEDIA ALERT: NCAA COLLEGE BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT - MARCH MADNESS...
McCloskey et al. on significance testing in economics
Now that we're on the topic of econometrics . . . somebody recommended to me a book by Deirdre McCloskey. I can't remember who gave me this recommendation, but the name did ring a bell, and then I remembered I...
Good stuff from 2008
Some fun things you might have missed . . . No justice, no foul Ed Park is a Democrat Walter de la Mare was a statistician Just quaid The effectiveness of peacekeeping The statistics of art Objects of the class...
No justice, no foul
This article, by Jim Stallard, is just hilarious. It's at the intersection of politics and basketball. There are just so many funny lines here, I just don't know where to start....
Kazin to Birstein to a more general question of how we evaluate people's character based on traits that might, at least at first glance, appear to be independent of character
I read Richard Cook's biography of Alfred Kazin recently. It was surprisingly interesting--I say "surprisingly" because Kazin didn't live a particularly eventful life. I wanted to read the book in the first place because I like a lot of Kazin's...
Good players make good coaches? Leading to a discussion of confidence-building in statistical analyses
Andrew Oswald sent me this paper by Amanda Goodall, Lawrence Kahn, and himself, called "Why Do Leaders Matter? The Role of Expert Knowledge." Here's the abstract: Why do some leaders succeed while others fail? This question is important, but its...
Book review: Predictably Irrational
I recently read Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational and wrote down my comments as I read. After the jump, you can read these thoughts....
Basketball statistics
I don't know anything about basketball (except that the players are shorter than they say they are, and I don't really even know that); nonetheless, in the recent-but-still-grand tradition of blogging . . ....
What to learn in your statistics Ph.D. program?
Cosma Shalizi (of the CMU statistics dept) and I had an exchange about the role of measure theory in the statistics Ph.D. program. I have to admit I'm not quite sure what "measure theory" is but I think it's some...
Bayesian Adjusted Plus/Minus Statistics in Basketball
Josh Menke writes, I saw that you had commented on adjusted plus/minus statistics for basketball in a few of your blog entries [see also here]. I've been working on a Bayesian version of the model used by Dan Rosenbaum, and...
Multilevel modeling of binomial data of the form 0/n or n/n
Xue Li and Dick Campbell write, We are doing research on racial and SES disparities in stage at breast cancer diagnosis which involves using tract-level poverty estimates to impute person-level SES variables. We are trying to do this using Bayesian...
Maintaining competitive balance in basketball: I disagree with Bill James
The great Bill James writes: In sports, mathematical analysis is old news as applied to baseball, basketball, and football. . . . But it has not yet been applied to leagues. . . . Rather than beginning with the question...
More on significance testing in economics
After I posted this discussion of articles by McCloskey, Ziliak, Hoover, and Siegler, I received several interesting comments, which I'll address below. The main point I want to make is that the underlying problem--inference for small effects--is hard, and this...
Effectiveness of geriatric specialists, leading to a brief discussion of the "separate accounts" fallacy in decision making and a comparison of the climates of Baltimore and St. Paul
I'd like to move from basketball to something more important: geriatric care, a topic I was reminded of after reading this interesting article by Atul Gawande. The article starts with some general discussion of the science of human aging, then...
Racial bias in basketball fouls
Yu-Sung and Jeff pointed me to a study by Joseph Price and Justin Wolfers on racial discrimination among NBA referees. Basically, black refs call more fouls on white players and vice-versa. Here's a news article (by Alan Schwarz), here's the...
Basketball update
David Berri very nicely gave detailed answers to my four questions about his research in basketball-metrics. Below are my questions and Berri's responses....
How can and should we interpret regression models of basketball?
I read Malcolm Gladwell's article in the New Yorker about the book, "The Wages of Wins," by David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, and Stacey L. Brook. Here's Gladwell: Weighing the relative value of fouls, rebounds, shots taken, turnovers, and...
NCAA men's basketball tournament...place your bets
I'm not much of a sports fan, but I enjoy reading "King Kaufman's Sports Daily" at Salon.com. (I think Kaufman's column may be only available to "Premium" (paid) subscribers). For the past few years, Kaufman has tracked the performance of...
Confusion about altruism
Many scientists of the "selfish gene" persuasion get bothered by instances of altruistic behavior by humans and other animals. For example, Damon Centola forwarded these links: Human beings routinely help others to achieve their goals, even when the helper receives...
Basketball plus-minus statistics and multilevel modeling
A cool way to summarize a basketball player's contribution to his team is the plus-minus statistic or "Roland rating," which is "the difference in how the team plays with the player on court versus performance with the player off court."...
Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Bill Gates
In the 1990s, three popular topics of conversation went along the lines of, "Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player ever," "Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer ever," and "Bill Gates is the richest guy ever." I recall a sort...
Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state: who's voting for whom in Presidential elections?
Higher-income states support the Democrats, but higher-income voters support the Republicans. This confuses a lot of people (for example, see here and here). Boris presented our paper on the topic at the Midwest Political Science meeting last weekend. Here's the...
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