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Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol
Are judges like baseball umpires?
(Supreme Court judges, that is.) Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University, reports in this op-ed that there were no dissenting opinions in more than two-thirds of the cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last term. Here is an excerpt from Katyal’s … Continue reading
Aaron Hernandez pre-trial discovery update
Bristol County prosecutors in the Odin Lloyd homicide case recently turned over to Aaron Hernandez’s defense lawyers 33 pages of text messages between Coach Bill Belichick (a/k/a Mr Grumpy) and Hernandez from February 2013 to May 2013–the four months prior to … Continue reading
“No one can say in advance where a game will go.”
This wonderful sentence is from Brian Phillips’s beautiful essay on the role of chance in the World Cup. Here is an excerpt: I made a list of the moments during the past month that stood out the most to me. I … Continue reading
Skill or luck?
What fraction of this amazing play by Yoenis Cespedes would you attribute to skill versus luck? More importantly, how would you define such concepts as “skill” and “luck”?
Is LeBron a Bayesian?
Polymath Tyler Cowen speculates thus: In Cleveland [LeBron] is not actually expected to win, at least not right away. They can play the young guys a lot and rest his legs and extend his career, while developing the quality of the … Continue reading
!Viva Bayes!
Hey, why are there so many Bayesians in Mexico this week? Maybe it’s because the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) is holding an international conference on Bayesian methods (see logo below) at the Cancun Conference Center in beautiful Cancun, Mexico. [*] By the way, … Continue reading
B+ or A-?
How would you grade LeBron’s eloquent essay? More importantly, what criteria would you use in assigning your grade (e.g., style, substance, grammar, spelling, etc.), and what weights would you assign to each criterion? (Props to Clickhole.)
What are the unofficial rules of the Tour de France?
And, more importantly, who enforces them? Craig Fry and Dennis Hemphill discuss the unofficial rules of the Tour de France here. William Fotheringham, ditto, here. You can find a concise summary of the unwritten rules of cycling here. Does this book include the unwritten … Continue reading
Do free agents play game theory?
Who will sign first? Melo, Lebron, or Bosh? In game-theory terms, what type of “game” are these free agents playing: Prisoner’s Dilemma, Chicken, Stag Hunt, or Battle of the Sexes?
* A question for Nate Silver
* Should Silver stop trying to predict sporting events and just stick to politics? Update your priors here and especially here.
prior probability 