I’ve taken a
lot of classes as a college student. As a result, I’ve come up with more than a
few ways of wasting time during lecture. One of my personal favorites is
FanGraphs – an analytically inclined baseball blog. The
irony of reading up on new hitting metrics during my stats lectures was
delicious and I like baseball, so it’s a pretty good marriage. One of their
tricks is to post two stat lines without identifying the player. If done right
it illustrates for readers how their preconceived notions of player value may
have clouded their judgment when evaluating talent. For example, which of these
players would you rather have:
Player A – batting avg.: 0.302; on base %: 0.360; slugging %: 0.522*
Player
B – batting avg.: 0.251; on base %: 0.332, slugging %: 0.475*
Player A is
clearly better right!? Well player A is Aaron Hill, a second baseman for the
Arizona Diamondbacks who pulls down $5 million a year and didn’t even make the
all star team this year. Player B is Mark Teixeira; he of the $180 million
contract and New York Yankee fame. Unless they had already done their homework,
few baseball fans would guess that Aaron Hill had a better 2012 than Mark freakin’
Teixeira! Anyways, if you’re into this sort of thing it can be quite fun, and
since the presidential election was just a short while ago it might be a cool
trick to apply to politics. So, try this one on for size:
President A – drone
assassinations: 278; enemy combatants detained: 2,400; awesome quote: “I’ve now
been in fifty-seven states; I think one left to go.”
President B – drone
assassinations: 52; enemy combatants detained: 1,400; awesome quote: “I know
the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
