THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I’d love to see this hockey stuff if you ever do publish it.  I used some ESPN data a couple years ago to try to do what 82games.com does in basketball as part of their Roland Rating: combine the performance of a team with and without a given player in the game.  Of course, all I used to operationalize performance was +/- but it was a fun analysis in any case.

I’m not convinced an 82 game season is nearly enough of a sample size to draw meaningful conclusions, unfortunately.  There’s a huge percentage of goals in hockey that I’d consider “flukey” - perhaps 50% or more.  That is, they weren’t designed plays, they weren’t a player getting the puck in open ice and skillfully putting it past the goalie… they were more like low-probability ricochets, a teammate accidentally screening his goalie, etc.

In fact, although a goalie faces far more shots each year than a ballplayer gets ABs, I wonder if BA predicts future BA better than save% predicts future save%.

I’m a bit confused by something, although it’s just a minor thing. On the Wiki DIPS page, Tango writes that while Tippett got the FIP ratios by regression, he got them by theoretical analysis. Yet I clearly recall asking Tango on Fanhome, when he first published it as “Quick DIPS”, how he got the -.22 value for K, and he said he got it by regression.

Just wondering why the discrepancy.

Clay, not Tippett, got it by regression.  I originally got mine by regression, and then solved for it analytically.

My thinking is that if you acknowledge anyone and everyone who did similar work before you, readers can judge for themselves if you are making an additional contribution.  I am quite flattered when someone improves on something I did and actually mentions my work.

That doesn’t solve the problem of someone knowingly duplicating your research *before* you’ve had a chance to publish.

I agree with Phil’s basic position. 

A good example is when he (Phil) and I both developed practically the same metric (Leverage Index for me, Relative Importance for him).  The core of it was exactly the same, and just a smidge different overall.  I probably published mine a couple of months before he did, but he may have worked on his even before I did mine.  In a case like that, there’s no real reason for Phil to acknowedge LI, but, he went out of his way to credit LI anyway.

Hardball Times is fantastic for the way they acknowledge similar work as well.

Lay it all out, and let the readers decide what’s what.

But, the case of Football Outsiders is pretty terrible.

>there’s no real reason for Phil to acknowedge LI, but, he went out of his way to credit LI anyway.

Sure there was a real reason to acknowledge it ... it was almost the same as mine, and appeared earlier!  I probably should have given it more credit than I did (I think there was just a footnote) ... my excuse is that I found out about your work just before BTN was about to go to press.

Sometimes you get any idea from someone and expand on it, run with it, or even duplicate it yourself.  Sometimes you do work completely independently from someone else, whether they have published their work or not (if published, presumably you did not read it).  Sometimes two people do similar or the same work but both are inspired by the same source.  And everything in between.  Who gives a rat’s ass?  I don’t.

If you or the other person are selling something and there is a conflict as to the ownership of the IP, then one or the other can sue and let the courts sort it out.  If not (no profiting), then I don’t much care.

IOW, much ado about nothing.  It is mostly an ego thing.  Some people care more than others about getting credit, accolades, recognition, etc., even when no money is involved.

Some people are whiners.  Some people have a hard time getting their facts right for whatever reason.  And some people are just downright dishonest cads.  Such is life in the fast lane.

I think that in the Football Outsiders case, it’s similar to…

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/opinion/18public.html?ei=5090&en=a45e68d1548171b0&ex=1308283200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

...Jayson Blair, on a smaller scale.  It’s downright plagiarism.  There is a “profit”, in terms of how much those publications are paying these writers.

The Star Ledger in NJ has a Sunday section, and the writer often puts quotes from The Hockey News directly into his “weekly recap”.  At the very bottom, you always see “sources from wire, AP”, and what not.  I would prefer that he actually say The Hockey News.  What’s strange is that the hockey writer for The Star Ledger is also the hockey writer for the NJ Devils in The Hockey News.  He’s essentially lifting (quotes mostly) from his own buddies, without a direct acknowledgement.

Not plagiarism at all, but I thought I’d share a great line I heard on Monday night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

Stewart: So, what do we do then? [regarding America’s status in the Middle East]

Jason Jones: We? There’s no we, I’m Canadian! Everyone loves us. We’re like the world’s gay friend.

(Transcript from http://grrrlmeetsworld.com/2007/05/different-kind-of-quotable.html )

Another Jon Stewart/Canada gem, from his standup days: “A Canadian woman asked me what Americans think of Canada. We don’t.”

Since this has morphed into a humor blog, here’s a good baseball one from our PizzaCutter:

http://mvn.com/mlb-stats/2007/05/21/a-sabermetricenglish-dictionary/

The issue of simultaneous inventions is one reason why people need to be careful about claiming originality for their ideas or discoveries—and why who actually published something first is important in scientific research.  You may have invented something independently or before someone else but if you’re not the first to publish it, you risk being accused of copying somebody else, or perhaps of just not being original.  To protect your “interest,” you can’t sit on stuff.

In “industry,” you run the further risk that your independent invention will already be patented or trademarked or copyrighted by somebody else if you wait around. And in that case, you can’t “profit” from your invention even if you came up with it independently.

So I encourage you not to sit on a magnum opus expecting to claim originality for it.