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Tag Archives: Sports
Evidence of match-fixing at the World Cup?
In German: here. In English: here. We blogged about this possibility on 23 June. So, we need to update our priors … World Cup match-fixers?
Faking it
We can’t help but cheer for Pepe (although his little headbutt looks fake too!) … Also, you will find a plausible theory explaining why players have an incentive to fake injuries in Michael Gard’s excellent essay Faking it: why football players feign injury. … 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.
How many World Cup matches are fixed?
Forty-eight matches will played during the first stage of the World Cup in the nation of Brasil. But how many, pray tell, of those “first 48” matches will be fixed or rigged in some form, e.g. by means of payoffs to … Continue reading
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
How much cheating goes on (in football)?
Alan Burdick, a writer for The New Yorker (one of our favorite English-language weekly magazines), summarizes some recent research in this area conducted by Chris Stride, a psychologist at the University of Sheffield: First, [Stride] had to define cheating. In soccer, all sorts of … 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
Fair or foul?
What unwritten rule or social norm did Brewers’ slugger Carlos Gomez violate in this at-bat? Addendum: Major League Baseball decided not to impose any suspension on Pirates’ pitcher Gerrit Cole (not even a token one-game suspension), even though he was the player … Continue reading
Let’s get real: teams with losing records should not be in the playoffs
The Atlanta Hawks have a losing record this season (38-44), but they are still in the NBA playoffs because they happen to have the eighth best record in the weak Eastern Conference. This is totally ridiculous and lame, right? Why … Continue reading
prior probability 