Coyote Blog

As a baseball fan, you may have heard something about Bill James, Billy Beane, and/or Sabremetrics, but were afraid all the math was too difficult.  Well, you too can use simple numbers to out-manage most major league skippers.  For today's introduction, you only need one simple table of numbers:

These are the run expectancy numbers, compiled from data in the 1999-2002 baseball season.  Here is how to read the table: With a runner on 2nd (row three) and two outs (column three) a team on average can expect to score .344 runs the rest of that inning.

So, to test your understanding, how much does a leadoff double increase a team's chance of scoring?  Well, the base run expectancy at the beginning of an inning is .555 runs.  After a leadoff double, you are in the square for man on second, still no outs, which has a run expectancy of 1.189.   On average, then, a leadoff double increases the scoring expectations for the inning by 0.634 runs, which is a lot.  So here are a few simple sabremetric type conclusions you can reach just from this data:

• Outs are extraordinarily valuable.  For example, man on first and third with two outs has a WORSE run expectancy than you have at the beginning of the inning, ie it is worse than nobody on and no outs.
• Bunting almost never makes sense.  Assume a runner on first, no outs -- a typical bunting situation.  After a succesful bunt, you have runner on second and one out.  Notice that this has REDUCED the run expectancy from 0.953 to 0.725.  The reason I say "almost" never is that an even worse outcome is a strikeout, which would take you to man on first and one out for a RE of .573.  For batters highly likely to strike out or pop up in the infield (think: pitchers) bunting can make sense.
• You can actually calculate what percentage chance of success you need to justify stealing second.  Lets again take man on first, no outs.  The RE is 0.953.  If he steals successfully, the RE goes to 1.189.  If he gets thrown out, the RE goes to 0.297 (bases empty, one out).  If X is the probability of stealing success, then 1.189X+0.297(1-X)>0.953.  X must be about 74% or greater.

Exercise: You have two hitters.  Assume they always lead off an inning.  One hits .300 with all singles.  The other hits .258 but a third of his hits are doubles, the rest singles.  Which is more valuable (assuming they walk and strikeout at the same rate)

Of late, it certainly appears that many colleges have invented a new right:  The right not be be offended.  Many college speech codes still are alive and well, and the broadest of them ban any speech that any particular listener "finds offensive"  (this example at Brandeis University carries especially sweet irony).  As I have written a zillion times, bans on hate speech are usually the leading edge of attempts to apply fairly comprehensive speech controls.

So Kudos to MIddlebury's President Ronald D. Liebowitz, as quoted at FIRE, who makes what should be an obvious point, that there is no crime in speech that makes you uncomfortable.  Speech one disagrees with needs to be answered with more speech.

But greater diversity means change, and change on college campuses
is almost always difficult. Few 18 to 22 year olds are skilled in
inviting or tolerating perspectives that are vastly different from than
their own. Frankly, the same goes for 30-, 40-, and
50-something-year-old academics. Even though a campus may become more
diverse in terms of the numbers of underrepresented groups present, the
level of engagement can still be inconsequential if those representing
different viewpoints are not encouraged and supported to express them.
If an institution is not prepared to make space, figuratively speaking,
for previously excluded groups, and support their presence on campus,
its diversity efforts cannot succeed. And if the wariness about
discomfort is stronger than the desire to hear different viewpoints
because engaging difference is uncomfortable, then the quest for
diversity is hollow no matter what the demographic statistics on a
campus reflect.

 

In order for the pursuit of diversity to be intellectually
defensible and valuable to those seeking a first-rate education at
places like Middlebury, it needs to result in deliberation. It cannot
simply facilitate the exchange of one orthodoxy or point of view for
another. The best liberal arts education requires all voices, those of
the old order as much as those of the new, and even those in between,
to be subjected to the critical analysis that is supposed to make the
academy a distinctive institution in society.

Lots more good stuff in the speech.

Anthony Watts is offering an opportunity to help out climate science and participate in something of a climate scavenger hunt.  What is considered the most "trustworthy" temperature history of the US comes from a series of temperature measurement points called the US Historical Climate Network (USHCN).  There are perhaps 20-25 such measurement points in each state, usually in smaller towns and more remote spots.  Some of these stations are well-located, while others are not - having been encroached by urban heat islands of growing towns or having been placed carelessly (see here and here for examples of  inexcusably bad installations that are currently part of the US historical temperature record).

Historically, climate scientists have applied statistical corrections to try to take into account these biasing effects.  Unfortunately, these statistical methods are blind to installation quality.  Watt is trying to correct that, by creating a photo database of these installations, with comments by reviewers about the installation and potential local biases. 

He has created an online database at surfacestations.org, which he explains here.  Your faithful blogger Coyote actually contributed one of the early entries, and it was fun  -- a lot like geocaching but with more of a sense of accomplishment, because it was contributing to science.

So why is it a scavenger hunt?  Well, my son had a double header in Prescott, AZ, which I saw was near the Prescott USHCN station.  Here is what I began with, from the official listing: 

PRESCOTT (34.57°N, 112.44°W; 1586 m)

That looks easy -- latitude and longitude.  Well, I stuck it in Google maps and found this.  Turns out on satellite view that there is nothing there.  So I then asked around to the state climatologist's office - do you know the address of this station.  Nope.  So I zoomed out a bit, and started doing some local business searches in Google maps around the original Lat/Long.  I was looking for government property - fire stations, ranger stations, airports, etc.  These are typically the location of such stations.  The municipal water treatment plant to the east looked good.  So we drove by, and found it in about ten minutes and took our pictures.  My entry is here.

Not only was it fun, but this is important work.  In trying to find some stations in several states, I actually called the offices of the local state climatologist (most states have one).  I have yet to find one that had any idea where these installations were beyond the lat-long points in the data base.  If we are going to make trillion dollar political choices based on the output of this network, it is probably a good idea to understand it better.

Paraphrasing a famous saying, if you are not busy improving your home, it is busy falling apart.  So my wife and I, though our usual consensus building process** have decided to redo my daughter's room.  My wife offers me this bargain:  Honey, if you get all the furniture out of the way, and put down plastic, and do all the taping, I will paint the room.  Does anyone else sense that this is similar to saying "honey, if you marinate everything and chop everything in advance and do all the cleanup, I will cook dinner?"

Anyway, I took the deal, knowing that in fact my only real alternative to the offered bargain was the implied "or you could just do it all yourself."

** Marital consensus process:

Wife:  What is you first priority for our next home project
me:  I'd like to finally build that hobby room and studio
w:  I think we need to fix up our daughter's bedroom
me:  Or maybe we could fix up the patio
w:  I think we need to fix up our daughter's bedroom
me:  uh, okay, let's do the bedroom

From Fred Thompson, via Insty:

But he received his biggest applause for blasting the bipartisan plan
for immigration reform, which he called unworkable. "We are a nation of
compassion, a nation of immigrants," he said. "But this is our home . .
. and we get to decide who comes into our home."

Isn't this an essentially socialist view of property, that the whole country is essentially owned by all of us collectively and it is our government's responsibility to administer access to this community property?

I am just completing a course on the history of Rome from the Teaching Company (whose products have been universally excellent in my experience).  One of the interesting things that contributed substantially to Rome's strength, at least through the BC years, was their flexibility and success in absorbing many different peoples into the state.  They actually had various grades of citizenship, including such things as Latin Rights where certain peoples could get access to some aspects of citizenship (e.g. ability to conduct commerce and access to the judicial system) while being denied others (e.g. voting). 

Can't we figure out something similar?  Shouldn't it be possible to allow fairly open access to being present and conducting commerce in this country, while still having much tougher and tighter standards for voting and getting government handouts?  The taxes immigrants pay easily cover things like emergency services and extra load on the courts, but fall short of covering extra welfare and education. 

Unfortunately, the debate seems to be dominated either by Lou Dobbs racists who see Mexicans as spreading leprosy or by Marxists who see poor immigrants as a wedge to push socialism.  The problem is again traceable to a President who tries to lead on divisive issues without trying to clearly communicate a moral high ground.  For example, I would have first tried to establish one simple principle that has the virtue of being consistent with most of America's history:   

"The US should allow easy access to our country for immigrants, but immigrants should expect that immigration involves financial risks which they, not current Americans, will need to bear.  Over time, they will have access to full citizenship but the bar for such rights will be set high."

OK, it needs to be shorter and pithier, but you get the idea.  Reagan was fabulous at this, and Clinton was pretty good in his own way.  Bush sucks at it.

TJIC finished putting in his own cabinetry, and it looks awesome.  Clearly, this is the guy my wife thought she was marrying.

I have completed my draft version 0.9 of a Skeptical Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming.  I am still editing it a bit before I publish it, but if you would like a pre-release copy, just send me an email.