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Tag Archives: rules
A friendly critique of Steve Coast’s critique of rules
We stumbled upon this excellent essay (“The world will only get weirder”) by Steve Coast via the hyper-productive Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution (our second-favorite website, by the way). In summary, Mr Coast argues that there is an inverse relation between … Continue reading
Is the offside rule in international football (Law 11) clear or confusing?
FYI: Here are the official guidelines for interpreting Law 11 (the offside rule in international football). Here is a useful Power Point presentation (consisting of 37 slides) explaining Law 11.
Time-outs versus “stoppage time”
Don’t you hate the endless series of strategic time-outs in basketball and American football, which always end up breaking up the flow of the game? We do. Why can’t all sports follow the international football (soccer) model and use a … Continue reading
Complexity versus simplicity
Explain this: 1. The official rules of America’s pastime consist of 119 singled-spaced pages. 2. The official laws of the beautiful game, by contrast, take up less than 50 pages. Why are the rules of baseball so much more complicated than the rules … Continue reading
Foreign substances
When Yankees’ pitcher Michael Pineda was ejected last night at Fenway Park for openly using a “foreign substance” to get a better grip on the baseball, the Red Sox batter he was facing (Grady Sizemore) was openly wearing a pair … Continue reading
Mr. Monopoly has a Facebook page
Note: this post was revised and expanded during the morning of 26 March 2014. Did you know that Mr Monopoly — the iconic, mustachioed, round little man in a top hat and coattails who also happens to be the official … Continue reading
prior probability 