Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by robg on Monday November 10, 2008 @06:01AM
(#359098)
This is hilariously awesome:
When we took him to preschool one time, we dropped him off, and he announced, ‘Today, I’m a numbers machine,’ and started counting, Brian Silver said. When we picked him up two and a half hours later, he was ‘Two thousand one hundred and twenty-two, two thousand one hundred and twenty-three...’
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by robg on Monday November 10, 2008 @08:27AM
(#359178)
My second thought (after the laughter) - but then I think it shows how much we want to ascribe "problems" to kids. It's obvious he turned out okay and it's sad to think that under other parents he may have been diagnosed rather than encouraged.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by unalone on Monday November 10, 2008 @12:56PM
(#359455)
Yeah. It surprises me, when I hear stories about parents overreacting about kids doing weird things. They're kids. They love experimenting with weird stuff like that. Hell, some people keep doing it when they get older - they're the fun sorts of people.
Can anybody here honestly say they didn't do anything weird as a kid? I remember reciting numbers from the Guinness Book of World Records into a tape recorder, in the belief that any number I said was the money I'd make. (I also think I did that with computer pixels on a low-res screen, for that matter.) I'm sure almost everybody here did strange stuff as a kid.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by scott_s on Monday November 10, 2008 @04:57PM
(#359796)
Let's give people who actually make austim and Asperger's diagnoses more credit.
Being obsessed with and good at maniuplating numbers and rule bases systems, and consequently being better at it than peers, is a sign of autism and Asperger's. But one sign is not enough for a diagnoses. If he exhibited no communication and socialization problems, he would not fit the description.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by fallentimes on Monday November 10, 2008 @02:52PM
(#359615)
Why don't you like player projection systems? While it's impossible to accurately predict almost anything as complex as baseball consistently, players projections are an awesome tool.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by jpavlik on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @10:23AM
(#360559)
I can understand why people like them. I don't say they suck and they're of no use. I just don't like them personally. Not really sure why. I think it's because the line "you can't predict baseball" keeps running through my head. PECOTA is as accurate as they come, though.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by ra on Monday November 10, 2008 @06:44AM
(#359124)
Thanks for posting this. A very enjoyable article that demonstrates how the broader application of entrepreneurial behaviors to a problem, that Nate clearly has a passion for, can blow the incumbents clean out of the water.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by ryanmahoski on Monday November 10, 2008 @09:39AM
(#359225)
By the end of [election] night, Mr. Silver had predicted the popular vote within one percentage point, predicted 49 of 50 states’ results correctly, and predicted all of the resolved Senate races correctly.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by Goladus on Monday November 10, 2008 @11:45AM
(#359366)
No, his site maintained an updated assessment of the current probability. I'm not really sure what the article means when it says he 'called it' in March. He was probably just showing Obama with a greater chance of winning.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by unalone on Monday November 10, 2008 @03:18PM
(#359655)
He showed Obama with a higher percentage except for immediately after Palin, and then he explained that it was a bump that promised to diminish.
What impressed me about his site isn't just his predictions, but how good he was at predicting how his model would change in the future. He could predict how his model would change every day for a week in advance, and he was almost always right as to how the "market" would react.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by ojbyrne on Monday November 10, 2008 @07:32AM
(#359150)
Um, I (and the whole world) called it for Obama before 10pm that night. It seemed clear to me that the "incumbents" must have been legally required (or something) to wait till the polls closed on the west coast before they could make it official.
And lots of people called the election months before too. I followed http://electoral-vote.com/ just because I followed them the last two elections. The job of prediction they did was comparable. Though FiveThirtyEight.com did seem to have more/better features.
Re:Baseball statistician tries politics and bats almost one ...
by josefresco on Monday November 10, 2008 @08:57AM
(#359199)
Agreed, if this guy had called the election in 04, or a more difficult call in '00 I would be impressed. As a democrat who saw 1 election stolen and 1 botched by Kerry, even I was confident in falling asleep early knowing we'd pull this one out.
When we took him to preschool one time, we dropped him off, and he announced, ‘Today, I’m a numbers machine,’ and started counting, Brian Silver said. When we picked him up two and a half hours later, he was ‘Two thousand one hundred and twenty-two, two thousand one hundred and twenty-three...’
Can anybody here honestly say they didn't do anything weird as a kid? I remember reciting numbers from the Guinness Book of World Records into a tape recorder, in the belief that any number I said was the money I'd make. (I also think I did that with computer pixels on a low-res screen, for that matter.) I'm sure almost everybody here did strange stuff as a kid.
Being obsessed with and good at maniuplating numbers and rule bases systems, and consequently being better at it than peers, is a sign of autism and Asperger's. But one sign is not enough for a diagnoses. If he exhibited no communication and socialization problems, he would not fit the description.
Silver predicts Rays win 88 games. Is ridiculed further. Rays win 97 games and go to the World Series. Absolute vindication.
That said, I hate his player projection systems. You can't predict baseball (though he comes about as close as you can).
http://www.azcentral.com/sports/diamondbacks/articles/2008/0...
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/nl/diamondbacks/2007...
This year wasn't an accident.
I doubt we've heard the last of Nate Silver.
From his posted predictions back in March? W-o-w.
What impressed me about his site isn't just his predictions, but how good he was at predicting how his model would change in the future. He could predict how his model would change every day for a week in advance, and he was almost always right as to how the "market" would react.
And lots of people called the election months before too. I followed http://electoral-vote.com/ just because I followed them the last two elections. The job of prediction they did was comparable. Though FiveThirtyEight.com did seem to have more/better features.