February 2008 Archives
Hat tip to David Berri on this one.
I'm pretty sure Pop is proud of his defense when he holds opponents to 30% from the 3point line, and you want to put a guy out there who averages 30%?
Really!?
And this is better than the best point guard in the game HOW?
Avery should know that, very much unlike Jerry Stackhouse, Jason Kidd is actually aware of the fact that he isn't one of the team's better shooters. Jerry is the very worst kind of bad player: the kind who thinks he's a really good player.
And I have to give some extra credit for confirming the 4th principle of economics to Mark Cuban. It appears that he was really upset about giving up Jerry Stackhouse, so when he had the opportunity to re-do the deal using Keith Van Horn, he decided to keep Jerry. At the risk of repeating myself: Jerry Stackhouse is NOT good. Again, look beyond the scoring totals. And getting rid of Stack was at least half of what made this such a great trade!
Seriously, this isn't rocket science. Every single one of you that plays in regular pick-up games knows this. You know the guy. He's the alpha dog of the gym. Takes all the shots. Hogs the ball a lot. Always wants the ball to go through him. Thinks he's the best player in the gym. At least half the gym thinks he is, too.
But you know in your heart that if you took 12 shots per pick-up game, you'd get 5 of your team's 11 too. Hell, if YOU took 12 shots a game, you'd get 8 of your team's 11. In fact, whenever you get that many shots, you do usually get 8 points. Trouble is, you don't get the ball that much. And you aren't as good at "creating your shot" as that guy. Someday I am going to write a whole blog post on how bullshit the whole "creating your own shot" myth is (hint: how often does the creator create a good shot? Really? There are tons of guys in the NBA who can create their own shot, but only about a half dozen of them regularly create good ones.). So you only shoot 4 shots a game. And everybody respects this guy as one of the best players. But seriously, if you're ever captain, who do you pick: the 6'7" muscled guy who grabs all the boards and plays really good D, or this guy who's really good at creating his own shot? And which team wins more often?
So it looks like Dallas has given up Desagna Diop, Jerr Stackhouse, Devin Harris, Maurice Ager and two picks for Jason Kidd, Antoine Wright and Malik Allen.
Provided that Wright and Allen never see the floor, this is a great trade for Dallas, and a decent one for New Jersey. Not only is Kidd a much better point guard than Harris (Harris is above average, but not Kidd. Seriously.) but this means that Jerry Stackhouse and his negative win score are gone. That's 24 minutes a game, or what amounts to -.2 wins over a half-season (or .2 losses, if you prefer that). Yes, Stackhouse is bad. Look beyond scoring totals.
Of course Wright and Allen are worse (MUCH worse) than Stackhouse, but unlikely to see the floor in Dallas, which has guys like Dirk Nowitski and Josh Howard to play forward, thank-you-very-much.
For the Nets, they get two above-average players, they get rid of two VERY below average players, they get rid of a ton of money in Kidd's contract. Seems like a good deal even if the first round picks aren't likely to be franchise players. Unless, of course, they are foolish enough to play Stack > 30 minutes a game and/or re-sign him after 2009.
Small 'd', even though I am a Democratic. I attended the caucus on Saturday here in Washington, and I must say that if you're feeling kind of down about the state of democracy, this is just the kind of thing you should get out and do to cheer yourself up. I was very impressed at the level of discussion (although, it's easy to have a civilized discussion when you know you won't, for example, be getting in any debates about whether or not gay marraige should be banned or the country should "stay the course" in Iraq, etc) and had a lot of respect for the Clinton voters. I support Obama, and was even elected as a delegate (a classic case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, I assure you), but my primary motivation isn't that I believe Obama is more suited to be president, it's that we need to move the country away from its current oligarchy status. Even if I KNEW that Hilary was the most capable person on the planet, I wouldn't vote for her, because I believe the principal of not setting the "ruling family precedent" is more important than putting the most competent person into the oval office (assuming a certain "baseline" competency exists -- I'd rather have a benevolent and competent Monarch than an imbecile running things, a choice that we were unfortunately not given anytime in the last 7 years).
One thing that did depress me is that our district sent an "uncommitted" delegate. In the final tally, 44 voted Obama, 17 voted Hilary, and 7 voted uncommitted. So 10% of our district gets to send one of 5 delegates (20% of the delegates, for those of you doing the math at home). It's very hard for me to understand how this is a) fair or b) even in the interest of those 7 undecided voters.
Help me out here. You're an undecided voter. Fair enough. Why send an undecided delegate to the convention? It's not like he's undecided for the same reasons you are. It's also not likely that he will use the same values as you would in coming to a decision in the next couple of months. You are basically abdicating your decision-making power to the delegate. So, tell me: how is this different from staying home on caucus day?!? How is this different from letting the superdelegates decide things for you?
I feel that as an undecided voter, if you attend the caucus, it should be with the purpose of using the caucus proceedings to decide. Anything else is just a cop-out, and, quite frankly, unfair to the rest of the voters -- your vote, apparently, is worth twice as much as mine. Hmmm. In fact, the Clinton supporters agreed with me, here. All of them said that they would rather send an additional Obama delegate than an undecided delegate. It's a bit of a mystery to me how an undecided voter would not be swayed by THAT argument.
One thing that did depress me is that our district sent an "uncommitted" delegate. In the final tally, 44 voted Obama, 17 voted Hilary, and 7 voted uncommitted. So 10% of our district gets to send one of 5 delegates (20% of the delegates, for those of you doing the math at home). It's very hard for me to understand how this is a) fair or b) even in the interest of those 7 undecided voters.
Help me out here. You're an undecided voter. Fair enough. Why send an undecided delegate to the convention? It's not like he's undecided for the same reasons you are. It's also not likely that he will use the same values as you would in coming to a decision in the next couple of months. You are basically abdicating your decision-making power to the delegate. So, tell me: how is this different from staying home on caucus day?!? How is this different from letting the superdelegates decide things for you?
I feel that as an undecided voter, if you attend the caucus, it should be with the purpose of using the caucus proceedings to decide. Anything else is just a cop-out, and, quite frankly, unfair to the rest of the voters -- your vote, apparently, is worth twice as much as mine. Hmmm. In fact, the Clinton supporters agreed with me, here. All of them said that they would rather send an additional Obama delegate than an undecided delegate. It's a bit of a mystery to me how an undecided voter would not be swayed by THAT argument.
Of course, Pr. Mankiw may claim that it's really "Rational People think at the Margins", but since most of us don't think very rationally, the principle really means that people are stupid (which sounds funnier than 'people are irrational'). I'm going to make this a recurring series.
People who don't play poker often ask me how I make so much money at poker (note: I'm not bragging here; many people think the $10k or so per year I make at poker is "a lot of money", but most poker pros make more than this in a month). I don't mean to simplify the game too much, but the short answer is that to beat poker consistently you have to a) have an above-average intelligence (I'm not talking multiple standard deviations from the norm here), b) be willing to put in some time studying the game, and c) have a rational understanding of probability (you might think that c is included in a but I've met some smart people that don't understand probability at all).
The next logical point that comes up is that there is more and more information about poker all the times. The 2+2 Forums will help you analyse practically any hand. Coaching sites like LeggoPoker and DeucesCracked offer instructional videos and you can get a coach to teach you to play. Poker books are nearly ubiquitous. So, since the bad players keep going broke, and there are more and more good players (or the bad players are getting better), the games must be getting REALLY hard to beat, right?
In a word, no. Thanks to the 4th Principle of Economics: People are Stupid.
Take coin-tossing, for example. Everyone knows the chance of winning a coinflip is 50% right? I mean, there are no debates about this. There are people in the world who are wildly misinformed about the probabilities of all kinds of events (winning the lottery, getting eaten by a shark, dying in an airplane crash, getting lung cancer from smoking, etc, etc ad infinitum ad nauseum), but winning a coin flip isn't one of them. Nevertheless, you can get people to give you 53/47 odds on a coinflip (meaning I lose, I give you $.47, I win, you give me $.53).
The Sports Economist analyzes some trends on contracts for the coinflip at the start of the superbowl:
Games will always be good. They are good because people are pretty bad at estimating all kinds of probability -- I know that Ace-king of hearts is a favorite over pocket jacks on a TQ5 board with 2 hearts and 2 cards to come, but most players don't. And I know that taking 2-to-1 odds is a really bad, bad, bad bet when I am a 6-to-1 dog, but most players don't.
But apparently, even if both my and my opponents both know the odds perfectly, at least half of the time I can get my opponent to take my bad bet anyway. Good times.
People who don't play poker often ask me how I make so much money at poker (note: I'm not bragging here; many people think the $10k or so per year I make at poker is "a lot of money", but most poker pros make more than this in a month). I don't mean to simplify the game too much, but the short answer is that to beat poker consistently you have to a) have an above-average intelligence (I'm not talking multiple standard deviations from the norm here), b) be willing to put in some time studying the game, and c) have a rational understanding of probability (you might think that c is included in a but I've met some smart people that don't understand probability at all).
The next logical point that comes up is that there is more and more information about poker all the times. The 2+2 Forums will help you analyse practically any hand. Coaching sites like LeggoPoker and DeucesCracked offer instructional videos and you can get a coach to teach you to play. Poker books are nearly ubiquitous. So, since the bad players keep going broke, and there are more and more good players (or the bad players are getting better), the games must be getting REALLY hard to beat, right?
In a word, no. Thanks to the 4th Principle of Economics: People are Stupid.
Take coin-tossing, for example. Everyone knows the chance of winning a coinflip is 50% right? I mean, there are no debates about this. There are people in the world who are wildly misinformed about the probabilities of all kinds of events (winning the lottery, getting eaten by a shark, dying in an airplane crash, getting lung cancer from smoking, etc, etc ad infinitum ad nauseum), but winning a coin flip isn't one of them. Nevertheless, you can get people to give you 53/47 odds on a coinflip (meaning I lose, I give you $.47, I win, you give me $.53).
The Sports Economist analyzes some trends on contracts for the coinflip at the start of the superbowl:
As anyone who has taken a statistics class knows, the expected value of the toss of a fair coin is 50/50 - a 50% chance of heads and a 50% chance of tails. So the expected value of a $10 contract on "heads on the Super Bowl coin toss" is 0.50*$10+0.50*0=$5, or 50 when expressed in the TradeSports price metric. TradeSports also makes price-volume data available for all contracts. There were 86 transactions, involving 275 contracts, in this particular market.Yes, folks, that's right, half of the participants bought a 50% chance of winning $10 for $5.35 or more. HALF.
....
This distribution is interesting, to say the least. The mean price was 50.33 and the median 50.35. Why would anyone pay more than 50 for a contract with an expected value of 50? Of the 85 transactions, 52 of them took place at a price greater than 50. Those two trades at 52, which are the equivalent of betting $5.20 for a 50% chance of winning $10, both came minutes before the coin toss.
Games will always be good. They are good because people are pretty bad at estimating all kinds of probability -- I know that Ace-king of hearts is a favorite over pocket jacks on a TQ5 board with 2 hearts and 2 cards to come, but most players don't. And I know that taking 2-to-1 odds is a really bad, bad, bad bet when I am a 6-to-1 dog, but most players don't.
But apparently, even if both my and my opponents both know the odds perfectly, at least half of the time I can get my opponent to take my bad bet anyway. Good times.
