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Occasional Dining Review #1: Chaucer’s Pub

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Dining out, London. 1 Comment on Occasional Dining Review #1: Chaucer’s Pub

I have for a number of years been a member of a group of six people who have dubbed themselves The Dynamic Diners. We dine out weekly together – though not everyone makes it every week – and we do this because we like to dine out, we want to support local restaurants, and we like each other’s company. This isn’t a restaurant blog, but I will occasionally feature reports on one of our nights of Dining Dynamically if there is something noteworthy about it.

So – a while back all six Diners had a generally excellent evening out at Chaucer’s, a pub that has operated here in town for as long as I can remember. (Indeed, since the night I am writing about here, the Freeps featured a story (link) on the restaurant celebrating its 50th anniversary.) It shares a kitchen and menu with The Marienbad Restaurant next door, but we like the pub side, largely because of the cozy fireplace. On this night the pub was hopping, probably because there was an event on at the JLC just a block away. The place appeared to have been taken a bit by surprise by this, as there was only one server to handle the entire mostly occupied room while we were there. None the less, that one server was gracious, fun and highly competent, which easily compensated for the slight delays in service.

The kitchen here puts out hearty East European fare – schnitzels, goulash, roast pork and the like, and they do it well. All but one Diner was very pleased with what they ordered. However, in my view the best thing about our evening occurred to me about halfway through dinner. All six Diners were present, seated at a rectangular table, with myself and J across from one another at one end, I and G across from one another in the middle, and M and Mu across from one another at the other end. When the Diners are out, we are not a quiet table; many things are discussed, sometimes stridently, and often more than one topic is on the table – so to speak – at once. What I realized eventually was that I could be and often was part of the conversation going on between M and Mu at the other end of our table.

When one dines out a lot, as we do, you get used to (if not happy about) the fact that in many restaurants it can be impossible to carry on a conversation with fellow Diners even when they are sitting across from you. But here I was conversing easily with people at the farthest end of the table. The reason for this being possible at Chaucer’s is apparent if you look around. The walls are mostly wood, while the floor is carpeted. This contrasts with the more frequently encountered style of restaurant décor consisting almost exclusively of hard, echo-producing surfaces. Add to that many restauranteurs’ insistence on piping music into their already loud rooms, and you have a recipe for ending the evening hoarse and headachy. Indeed, the Diners no longer go to AnnDining precisely because our last visit to that particularly egregious example of LOUDness had exactly that effect on us.

Not at Chaucer’s. If there was any piped in music, I couldn’t hear it. Just the sound of my fellow Diners’ voices, arguing and laughing about all sorts of interesting things. It was wonderful, and added much to our enjoyment of the evening. And, keep in mind that the room was nearly full of other diners. Didn’t matter, we at our table of six could all talk to one another. A gift, to be sure, and an all-too rare one. It will bring us back to Chaucer’s again in the future.

Op-Eds in News Clothing

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in London, News Media. 1 Comment on Op-Eds in News Clothing

In the mainstream news media, it has long been common practice to distinguish between articles that are reporting news and opinion pieces. However, something that I see turning up with increasing frequency in news outlets are articles that are not labelled as Opinion, but are in fact mostly that. An example of this came up last year in the local London Free Press (aka The Freeps).

The article is titled “Western accused of trying to push aside women’s hockey concerns”, which appeared on page A2 of the Nov 11, 2023 paper edition of the Freeps that landed on my porch that morning. The byline is Jane Sims, a regular reporter for the Freeps.

The story out there in the world that this article refers to is the fact that the UWO women’s hockey team went through a kerfuffle involving the University’s strength-training coach (who worked with all the university’s athletes, apparently) and the team’s own coach. There was an investigation which resulted in the strength coach being dismissed but the coach of the hockey team staying on. Reports in previous editions of the Freeps indicated that not all of the hockey team players were happy with this outcome. This article of Nov 11 occupies 24 column-inches in this edition of the Freeps, making it the longest article in the paper’s Section A not covering some aspect of Remembrance Day. There is some re-stating of what had happened previously in the matter, some other material (e.g., that about 20 players were on the ice for the last practice) that may be new to readers, but what is undoubtedly new in the article is a series of quotes from Garrett Holmes, who is said to be the founder of The Canadian Student-Athlete Association. The website for this organization states the following:

The Canadian Student-Athlete Association is a non profit unincorporated association founded by Western University student-athlete Garrett Holmes on July 20, 2020.   

It serves as the only independent voice for Canadian university and college athletes. 

The article notes that Holmes had written two letters to the UWO president criticizing the university’s handling of this matter, and quotes him repeatedly.

I am citing this article not because I find what Holmes has to say about all this objectionable, but because the article is presented as news, when in fact it is to all intents and purposes an opinion piece that presents the opinions of one person regarding this matter – Garrett Holmes. There is nothing in the article to suggest that Holmes has any more information about what happened than would anyone else who had been reading about it in the Freeps. He has not interviewed anyone at Western so far as we know, nor has he any inside information not available to others. He has an opinion about what happened, as might you, but you didn’t get quoted in the Freeps. The Freeps simply inserts his opinions – and no one else’s – into what is supposed to be a news article. Indeed, the article headline – not typically written by the reporter – suggests that Mr. Holmes’ views about what happened are the entire point of the story.

So I ask, why Mr Holmes’ views, and his views only? Did Ms Sims contact anyone else to get their, possibly differing, views? Did she contact the UWO Prez, or John Doerksen, or the coach herself, or any players? Is there something about Mr. Holmes that makes him uniquely qualified to have his views aired in London’s only newspaper?  He is indeed the founder of the CSAA, and you can visit that org’s website here (link). It lists Mr Holmes as founder, has some info about him, and you can also read there its two-page constitution, and note that it’s Board of Directors is ‘coming soon’ – just as it has been since the Freeps article appeared last year. The constitution’s last line is “This constitution may only be amended by a unanimous vote of the Board.”

There is a larger point here, that ‘news’ articles in many outlets include a lot of what is said or written by ‘advocates’, ‘activists’ and ‘experts’ . If Mr Holmes is an ‘expert’, the standards for that designation by the Freeps seem kinda low to me.

Moreover, if a media outlet is going to quote such people, the outlet has to choose which of the many available ‘experts’ to quote, and doing so necessarily inserts what are most typically no more than opinions into a news article.

By the usual conventions, this article is news rather than opinion because it does not include the opinions of Ms Sims, or anyone else who works for the Freeps, such as the Editorial Board. But quoting one and only one other person’s opinions moves the article into opinion none the less, in my view. Consider that if she wanted, Ms Sims could insert her opinions into any article just by finding an ‘expert’ or ‘advocate’ whose opinions she shares and quoting only them. I’m not saying this is what happened here, but still, this news story is really mostly opinion, because it mostly ‘reports’ the comments of one person.

One response to this might be – ‘Really, all you’re complaining about is the Freeps being a bit hazy about the line between news and opinion? People can tell the difference between the facts reported in the article and Holmes’ opinions. No big deal, get over it.’

I think it’s a deal. Why did the Freep do this? Why did they not just report on the latest developments in the matter, and leave any comments from Mr Holmes or others to the Op-Ed page? There are always many motives that can be dreamt up to explain any behavior you might observe, but I will hypothesize a particular one in this case.

News media outlets, and the Freeps in particular, want controversy in their news stories, they want to report that people are upset, outraged, deeply concerned, that they are ‘calling out’ other people. Mr Holmes’ comments got in the article, on my hypothesis, because he accuses the university of treating the athletes badly. He is quoted ‘I think it’s clear that some players, if not all, don’t feel it’s a safe environment….’(ellipsis in the original)*.  Mr Holmes cites safety concerns, and that is the great contemporary trigger – there is nothing worse you can accuse a person of in the 21st century than being unconcerned about safety. However Ms Sims came to know about Mr. Holmes and his views, I’m betting that he would have found himself ignored and un-quoted had he commended the UWO admin for its actions in this matter.

*(pseudo-footnote): I would never let my students back in the day get away with a sentence that starts with ‘I think it’s clear that….’ – a topic for another post.

 

Surge Pricing Burgers and the Importance of Reading the Whole Post

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, News Media. No Comments on Surge Pricing Burgers and the Importance of Reading the Whole Post

Wendy, Wendy what went wrong? – Brian Wilson and Mike Love

Some weeks back a news story made the rounds that Wendy’s CEO had announced in a call with investors that the company was planning to institute ‘surge pricing’ in its restaurants. You can read a somewhat outraged story about it in the NY Post here, if you missed it. Surge pricing in this case would mean that what you pay for items on their menu would vary with the time of day, as does the amount of business at Wendy’s – busy times would see higher prices. The technology to do this is the installation of menu boards at the drive-thrus on which prices could be changed electronically whenever desired. Presumably the same would be true for the in-store menu boards, also.

Anyway, this generated a mostly predictable amount of outrage from mostly predictable quarters, but I am writing about this not because of the pricing itself, or the outrage, but rather about what happened next. On February 28 the Globe ran an Associated Press article with the headline “Wendy’s says it has no plans to raise prices at busiest times at its restaurants”. Similarly, CNN’s website (a place I rarely go) ran an article on Feb 28 titled “Wendy’s says it won’t use surge pricing’.

To its credit, CNN also provided a link to the blog post in which Wendy’s supposedly backtracked from its CEO’s original statement to investors about this. You can read that post here also, if you like.

However, what convinced me this was worth writing about myself, was an Opinion article that appeared in my print edition of The Globe and was headed up thusly:

Surge pricing for burgers? Wendy’s was wise to reject it

Woonghee Tim Huh and Steven Shechter

Special to The Globe and Mail – Feb 29, 2024

Woonghee Tim Huh is professor and chair of the operations and logistics division at the UBC Sauder School of Business and the Canada Research Chair in operations excellence and business analytics.

Steven Shechter is a professor in the operations and logistics division at the UBC Sauder School of Business and the WJ VanDusen Professor of business administration.

****

You can read the online version of this Globe article here. In it, the UBC guys explain, sort-of, why it was wise of Wendy’s to back off from their original surge pricing plan.

No doubt Bus School profs have superior insight into firm pricing than do I, but it seems to me that it behooves all of us to read what the firm in question has to say about what they are doing before analysing what they are doing. Professors Huh and Shechter do quote from Wendy’s ‘backtracking’ blog post, in the paragraph below, quoted directly from the Profs’ G&M article:

So, on Wednesday, Wendy’s said its dynamic pricing plan would not raise prices during busy times. The plan, the company said, would only “allow us to change the menu offerings at different times of day and offer discounts and value offers.”

Point one: learn to use ellipsis if you only quote part of a sentence. Here is the full sentence from the actual Wendy’s blog from which the good Professors’ partial quote is taken:

“Digital menuboards could allow us to change the menu offerings at different times of day and offer discounts and value offers to our customers more easily, particularly in the slower times of day.”

Point two: everything that is important about the actual sentence posted by Wendy’s is the underlined part of it at the end which the Professors left out of their own quote. Had they included it, they might have felt compelled to explain how ‘raising prices during peak times’ differs from ‘offering discounts during slower times of day’, and that would be a truly difficult task, because there is no difference.

Back when I taught price discrimination strategies in my Managerial Econ class, I would start with something familiar to everyone – Seniors pricing. You know, you walk into the movie theatre and find something that looks like this:

Admission: $15.00

Seniors (55+): $12.00

(Sidebar: I would ask my students why so many businesses offer lower prices to seniors, and get lots of responses about corporate altruism and Seniors being on fixed incomes. It was fun then to show them that this pricing increased profits for the firms, no altruism needed.)

But I digress.

My point is that one does not see this sign in a theatre:

Admission: $12.00

Under 55: $15.00

There is no bloody difference in the price anyone pays for a theatre ticket with the two different signs, but the second one just seems so mean, while the first one seems nice.

Well, it’s the same with Wendy’s pricing: offering discounts at slow times seems nice, adding a premium when it’s busy, well that’s just mean, and Wendy’s would never do that. They said so, after all.

Minor point: If Wendy’s actually had, in some alternate universe, backtracked from surge pricing, I can’t say there is anything in the Sauder School authored Globe article that convinced me that backtracking would have been wise, the headline notwithstanding. However, since Wendy’s did not backtrack, that point seems not worth pursuing.

Not so minor point: Since it is clear from their own blog post that Wendy’s is going to install these quick-price-change menu boards, the following scenario becomes possible. The drive-thrus already have cameras focused on the cars in the queue, so it would be easy to build a data base of licence plate numbers at each store, or even across stores, so the store could determine, for example, how regular a customer they were serving. If Wendy’s corporate strategists have kept up with what goes on at insurance companies, they could then program their menu boards to show higher prices to frequent drive-thru-diners.

I used to teach students about that sort of ‘disloyalty pricing’, too, because insurance companies do employ it – they call it ‘price optimization’, and last I read, some US States were trying to ban it.

Shattering illusions, that was always my mission.

Coda: Before this post went to press, the WSJ published another article on surge pricing and other restaurant strategies. A quote from that article:

While some consumers tend to resent surge pricing, as Wendy’s discovered last month, they like happy-hour discounts and other deals at slow times, industry consultants said.

Whatever would the world do without industry consultants?

 

Attitudes on Peace, Order and Citizens’ Rights

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, News Media, Popular attitudes. No Comments on Attitudes on Peace, Order and Citizens’ Rights

At this point I have lived 63% of my life in Canada (nearly 81% of my adult life), but I was born in the US of A. It is common among my friends – wherever they were born – to argue about the differences, or lack thereof, between Americans and Canadians. Like all general comparisons, they are at best approximations, and not very precise ones, at that. Still, it’s a generally amusing exercise, and it gives us all something to argue about over beer.

However, sometimes things pop up on my radar that seem like they might reveal something useful about such differences. One example appeared in a letter to the Editor of the Globe and Mail just after the Federal court ruling that the Liberal Government of the time was not justified in invoking the Emergencies Act during the trucker convoy protest in Ottawa. It’s hardly surprising that this decision prompted a lot of folks to write to the G&M, but the letter below caught my attention –

Letter to the Editor, G&M print edition, Jan 25, 2024

Re: “Invoking Emergencies Act wasn’t justified and infringed on Charter rights, Federal Court rules” (Jan 24).

Really? What is wrong with this country?

We watched as a collection of bullies occupied Ottawa, breaking parking and noise bylaws and generally being inconsiderate to the local inhabitants. The federal government is now being censured for its decision, which solved the problem with no blood spilled.

We as polite Canadians seem to be at the mercy of individuals who claim that their right to cause mayhem trumps our right to peace, order and good government.

Signed, etc.

—

I immediately wrote a (sarcastic, I admit) reply to this letter and sent it to the G&M Editors, which of course they did not print. I mean, really – the three sins of the protesters you can name are breaking parking and noise by-laws and being inconsiderate, and that to you is sufficient grounds for the government to invoke the Emergencies Act and start demanding banks turn over account information? Really?

I suspect if you asked 100 Canadians and 100 Americans whether they agreed with the letter-writer’s position, you would get a higher percentage agreeing among the Canadians than among Americans, but I’m not confident that the difference would be all that large. My suspicion is that 21st-century citizens of all the advanced democracies are on average more concerned with peace and order than with any threat to their rights as citizens. That is, to be sure, no more than a hunch, based on being on the planet a long time. If anyone knows of good research on Can-Am differences in attitudes about such matters, I would love to get references.

Young, Rogan and the Cost of Principles

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Popular attitudes, Standards. No Comments on Young, Rogan and the Cost of Principles

Came across an article in the Wall Street Journal last month headlined as:

Neil Young Will Return to Spotify After Two-Year Boycott Over Joe Rogan

Singer-songwriter says he had no choice but to return to streaming platform due to wider distribution of Rogan’s podcast

March 13, 2024 Gareth Vipers

For you non-WSJ subscribers who may have forgotten what this is all about, here’s a quote from the WSJ piece:

Young penned an open letter to his manager and label in 2022 asking them to remove his music from the platform, saying it was spreading fake information about Covid-19 vaccines through Rogan’s show.

The article explains that in fact, “…Young’s label legally has control over how and where his music is distributed…” but Vipers claims that they had reason to honor his request. The piece does not say if they actually did, and if they did not, then this would seem to have been a rather empty gesture on ol’ Neil’s part.

Anyway, the point of this piece was that Rogan had since 2022 made a very lucrative deal to have his podcast more widely streamed, including on Apple and Amazon, and in light of that, Young was going to start letting his musical recordings be distributed on Spotify again. [I am inferring from that piece of info that Warner Bros did indeed pull his stuff from Spotify in ’22.]

I am a fan of Young’s music. Hearing Cinnamon Girl blasting out of a pair of car speakers was one of the great thrills of my youth, and one of the few truly wonderful musical moments on the old Saturday Night Live show was when Young and Crazy Horse brought down the house with a searing version of Rockin’ in The Free World. The man was a serious rocker, and he wrote some great songs.

One of my favourite Neil Young moments was in 1988, when he put out an album titled This Note’s for You. It was a blast at other musicians who allow their music to be used to sell shit. One of my (admittedly costless to hold) convictions is that musicians (or actors or other performers) who have made serious money in their career and then allow their output or their selves to be used to sell shit – any shit – are putzes who I wouldn’t trust if I ever ran into them.

As one example, I was depressed a couple of years ago to hear the Who’s Eminence Front – one of their best recordings – being used to sell Nissans. From the movies we have Samuel L Jackson, Danny DeVito, Rob Lowe, Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and on and on….one sees them more often in ads than in movies.

[I would like to think there is a special place in hell for celebs who accept money to promote online gambling sites – Gretzky, McDavid, Matthews, Jamie Foxx, etc. But I’m sure there’s not.]

These people are not needy. I’m an economist, I get it, no one thinks they have enough money, but I happen to think there ought to be some things one will not do for more. And no, I am not saying that celebrities or people with more wealth than some specified number should be prohibited from selling other people’s shit. They all have a perfect right to do what they are doing. I’m really only saying I think less of them for doing it –  which troubles them not the least, I know.

So back to ol’ Neil. His original move to pull his music from Spotify had two characteristics. One, it harmed Spotify – maybe. Spotify operates a subscription model in which folks pay a monthly fee for the right to listen to music from its catalog, including Young’s. So, it would appear that Young’s move hurt Spotify only to the extent to which people cancelled their Spotify plans, either out of sympathy with Young, or simply because they would no longer be able to listen to his tunes on the platform. I don’t know if that happened (though I rather doubt it), but more important to me is the second characteristic, which is that Young paid a price himself for doing that. He lost his share of that revenue, too, and about that there is no doubt. To me, that speaks to a level of integrity in Young. I don’t mean to say I agree with Young’s apparent position that Rogan is evil. I’ve never listened to one of Rogan’s podcasts, and don’t know what was said on them that upset Young. My point is only that incurring a cost yourself over a principle signals integrity. Anyone can run around bashing others, imposing costs on others, people can do that just for amusement. Taking a hit yourself says something, it says you mean it. Similarly, Young’s apparent past refusal to let his music be used to sell shit cost him real $. Someone would surely have paid him to use his music to sell cinnamon or something, back in the day.

Of course, the corollary to all this is that Neil could have reacted to the recent news of the now-wider distribution of Rogan’s podcast by asking Warner Bros to pull his music from Amazon and Apple, too. That would be even more costly to Young, and would leave me even more impressed with his integrity and commitment. What he has actually done by, according to the article, allowing his music back on Spotify (along with leaving it on the other platforms) says to this observer that Young was not willing to pay that high a price for his principles.

And, to be clear, in ‘price’ I am not pointing only to the money he would lose from streaming payments. He’s a musician, composer and performer, and having people hear his music has been his life’s work. Losing that is a serious price to pay, even were no cash involved.

I judge Neil Young not, and I still thank him for putting out the This Note’s for You album and writing and recording Cinnamon Girl. I merely point out that everything has a price, and we all have to decide which prices we will pay and which we will not, and I continue to believe that those who pay a price to adhere to a principle deserve my respect, if not necessarily my agreement. And – those who have made millions, become famous and then go on to accept money to sell other people’s shit deserve my contempt.

Btw, if I’m right that Young’s original move in 2022 cost Spotify nothing, it raises another question: what was ol ‘Neil trying to accomplish? Topic for another post, perhaps.

 

Sci-fi in aid of Science

Written by Editorial Team on . Posted in Education, Research, Standards. 1 Comment on Sci-fi in aid of Science

I was a pretty big fan of science fiction in my younger days, and still read some from time to time. I think Frank Herbert’s  Dune is a great novel (the sequels not so much), enjoyed reading works by Heinlein, Le Guin and Asimov.. 

One of the genre’s leading lights back then was Arthur C Clarke, who wrote the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (in 1982) [not true, see below] on which the film was based. I was not a Clarke fan, don’t remember that I read any of his stuff. However, he made an interesting contribution to the culture beyond his books themselves, when he formulated three ‘laws’ regarding technology that have come to be known as Clarke’s Laws. He didn’t proclaim these all at once, and in any case it is the third law that is most cited, which so far as I can determine first appeared in a letter he wrote to Science in 1968. [If anyone has better info on the third law’s original appearance and antecedents I’d love to hear it.]

Clarke’s Third Law is: ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’

That strikes me – and many others, apparently – as a perceptive statement. Think of how someone living in 1682 anywhere in the world would regard television or radio. 

As with any perceptive and oft-repeated assertion,  this prompted others to lay down similar edicts, such as Grey’s Law: “Any sufficiently egregious incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

[I cannot trace Grey’s law back to anyone named Grey – if you can, let me know.]

Note that there is a difference, as Clarke’s law speaks to how something will be perceived, whereas Grey’s points at the consequences of incompetence vs malice. If you are denied a mortgage by a bank despite your stellar credit rating, the impact on you of that decision does not depend on whether it is attributable to the credit officer’s incompetence or dislike of you. 

On to Science, then, and what I will call Gelman’s Law (although Gelman himself does not refer to it that way). 

Most non-academics I know view academics and their research with a somewhat rosy glow. If someone with letters after their name writes something, and particularly if they write it in an academic journal, they believe it. 

It does nothing to increase my popularity with my friends to repeatedly tell them: it ain’t so. There is a lot of crappy (a technical academic term, I will elaborate in future posts) research being done, and a lot of crappy research being published, even in peer-reviewed journals. What is worse is that as far as I can tell, the credible research is almost never the stuff that gets written up in the media. Some version of Gresham’s Law [‘bad money drives out good money’] seems to be at work here. 

A blog that I read regularly is titled Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference and Social Science (gripping title, eh?), written by Andrew Gelman, a Political Science and Stats prof at Columbia U. I recommend it to you, but warn that you better have your geek hard-hat on for many of the posts. 

Although I often disagree with Gelman, he generally writes well and I have learned tons from his blog. One of the things that has endeared it to me is his ongoing campaign against academic fraud and incompetent research. 

He has formulated a Law of his own, which he modestly attributes to Clarke, but which I will here dub Gelman’s Third Law: 

“Any sufficiently crappy research is indistinguishable from fraud.”

I think this law combines the insights of Clarke’s and Grey’s. The consequences of believing the results from crappy research do not differ from the consequences of believing the results from fraudulent research, as with Grey. However, it is also true that there is no reason to see the two things as different. If you are so incompetent at research as to produce crap, then you should be seen as a fraud, as with Clarke. 

I will be writing about crappy/fraudulent research often here, in hopes of convincing readers that they should be very skeptical the next time they read those deadly words: “Studies show…”

I will close this by referring you, for your reading pleasure, to a post by Gelman titled:    

 It’s bezzle time: The Dean of Engineering at the University of Nevada gets paid $372,127 a year and wrote a paper that’s so bad, you can’t believe it.

It’s a long post, but non-geeky, and quite illuminating. (Aside: I interviewed for an academic position at U of Nevada in Reno a hundred years ago. They put me up in a casino during my visit. Didn’t gamble, didn’t get a job offer.) You can read more about this intrepid and highly paid Dean here. His story is really making the (academic) rounds these days. 

You’re welcome, and stay tuned. I got a million of ‘em….

p.s. Discovered this since I wrote the above, but before posting. One of many reasons this stuff matters, from Nevada Today

University receives largest individual gift in its history to create the George W. Gillemot Aerospace Engineering Department 

The $36 million gift is the largest individual cash gift the University has received in its 149-year history 

Anyone care to bet on whether this Dean gets canned?

 Corrigendum: An alert reader has pointed out that Clarke’s novel was not written in 1982 – indeed, the film came out in 1968. In fact the 2001 film was based largely on one of Clarke’s short stories from 1951: The Sentinel. Clarke did write a novel called 2010: Odyssey Two, in 1982, and a not-so-successful movie was based on that, in 1984.

 

Uses and Abuses of Statistics – MLB Edition

Written by Editorial Team on . Posted in Culture, News Media. No Comments on Uses and Abuses of Statistics – MLB Edition

If you watch a lot of sports as I do, you cannot fail to be aware of the so-called ‘Analytics Revolution’, a phenomenon that has wormed its way into sports broadcasting. Whatever professional teams may be doing with the reams of game and performance data they now collect, one cannot miss how much sportscasters talk about it, before, during and after each broadcast. 

As someone whose happiness would greatly increase if said sportscasters would just shut up, I cannot say all this statistic-centric chattering is welcome, but sometimes it is interesting. A frequent use of stats in a broadcast is when one of the commentators cites a statistic that they think is directly relevant to what is happening in the game. For example –  

Hockey team x scores the first goal of the game, and the commentator says ‘The team that scores first wins the game z% of the time.’

Baseball team y goes into the 6th inning trailing by 2 runs and the commentator says ‘Teams that trail by 2 or more runs in the second half of a game have only a Z% chance of winning.’

Now, there is no mystery as to where these statements come from. For the first one, you just look at the last 10 years (say) of all NHL games and see which team scored first and which team won. The percentage of the games in which it is the same team gives you z in the statement. 

A particular example of this occurred during the second round of last season’s MLB playoffs, when two teams were playing the third game of a best-of-five series, tied at one win each. The commentator said ‘The team that wins the third game in this situation goes on to win the series 70% of the time.’

Once again, it’s clear this statement comes from looking back at previous MLB best-of-five series in which the teams split the first two games, but in this case I had an immediate reaction to this stat: that seems too low. 

My immediate no-pencil-and-paper reaction was not that he was quoting a mistaken actual statistic, but rather that I thought the 3rd-game-winning-team would win the series more  often than that. I got out my pad and pen, and here is what I came up with. 

What would simple probability calculations predict for the probability in question? Imagine team A has won the third game against team B, so it is leading the series 2 to 1 with two possible games to go. Assume also, just as a starting point, that because this is the playoffs, these are two evenly matched teams. Thus, absent any specific information about each team in each game (who is pitching, injuries, weather, etc) one would expect the probability that either team wins is ½. 

Given that, you can calculate the probability of team A going on to win the series (having won game three) by noting that the series after game three can go only one of three ways:

  1. A wins game four and the series
  2. A loses game four but wins game five and the series
  3. A loses both games four and five and loses the series. 

This is the whole universe of possibilities, and it is easy to calculate the probability of each one.

  1. The probability is ½ under our assumption that 1/2 is the probability A wins any single game
  2. The probability A loses game four is ½ and the probability A wins game five is also ½, so the probability of those two events happening is ½ times ½ which is ¼. (The probability-aware out there will note that I have assumed that the probability of winning in each game is independent of what happens in the other game. I will come back to that below.)
  3. The probability A loses each game is again ½, so again the probability it loses both is ¼. 

Note that these three probabilities do add up to 1, so we have covered everything, but we have also found that the probability that either i or ii happens – the two cases in which A wins the series – add up to ¾, or 75%. 

So, on this account, my instincts were right, 70% is lower than 75%. 

However, when a calculation comes out differently than an actual number from the world, it is the calculation that must be re-thought. My first thought along those lines was the following: if A wins game three, then it has won two of three games against B, and although that is a small sample, it does point to the possibility that maybe team A is somewhat better than B, and that should be taken into account. 

For example, maybe in this scenario the probability A wins either of games four or five should be 0.55 and the probability B wins only 0.45. 

This is not helpful in reconciling the data with the calculations, however, as if one re-does the calculations for the probability of each of the three outcomes above, one now gets:

  1. 0.55
  2. 0.45 x 0.55 = 0.2475
  3. 0.45 x 0.45 = 0.2025

and the predicted probability of A winning the series is now up to 79.75%, even further away from the empirical 70%. 

Huh. 

So, one has to look at something else, and my preferred culprit would be the assumption built into all these calculations that the outcome of each game is independent of what happened in previous games. In particular, I suspect that a team that has won two of the three first games takes it a little easy in the fourth game. Not just that Team A’s players might ‘relax’ a bit, but also that team A’s manager might save his best pitcher for game five if he is needed, hoping that if they win game four his ace will be available for game one of the next round. In that scenario, the probability team A wins game four is less than 0.5, not more. You all can probably think of other explanations. 

In any case, it was clear that what the sportscaster who said this last autumn wanted us fans to think is ‘whoa, winning game three is really important’, when in fact there is something more interesting to be said: why don’t winners of game three do better than they do in a five-game series?