Long on Math, Short on Data
Monday, September 29, 2014
Being unfamiliar with the work of sports writer Dan Carson, I may be having a
Poe's Law moment* here,
but...
Carson positively drips with sarcasm -- or at least he sounds
like it, and he arguably should -- as he writes of a statistical
"proof" that the walk-off single with which Derek Jeter closed his Hall of Fame
career was staged:
Can you argue with that? No, you can't. It's math, and it proves that while the Orioles had all the reason in the world to win Thursday night, they likely colluded with powers unknown to intentionally drop the game. Why else would they throw to a struggling 40-year-old in the trough of his career?I don't follow baseball, but a quick read of the American League standings and schedule shows that Baltimore had a shot at securing the best American League record at the time, and so a slight home field edge throughout its post-season. And that's just one of many reasons to reject out of hand the whole idea that this event, as incredible as it might seem, was staged. A few others: The pitcher, not being a machine and having a psychology, may have simply had a "bad day at the office"; sports are incredibly hard to choreograph; and conspiracies are actually quite rare due to the universal problem of loose lips.
I also don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to believe that the Yankees gave up three runs in the ninth to force a final Jeter at-bat. And I don't believe that Nike co-founder Phil Knight is above pulling multiple levers at Buffalo Wild Wings if it means sending off his company's golden boy in style. [bold added, links removed]
This kind of analysis, to have any probative value, would require lots of other corroborating evidence indicating, that -- against even greater odds than a poor pitch being thrown -- some big, pre-arranged conspiracy somehow successfully orchestrated a baseball game with playoff implications to come down to a certain player and to achieve a particularly dramatic result. Strangely enough, our mathematician never tries to tackle those odds, although he needn't.
This will sound like beating a dead horse to some readers, but the kind of argument our misapplied mathematician made is quite common, and is an example of what Ayn Rand called rationalism:
[Philosophers came to be divided] into two camps: those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts (the Rationalists)--and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists). To put it more simply: those who joined the [mystics] by abandoning reality--and those who clung to reality, by abandoning their mind. [bold added]Will Carson, or I, or anyone else who shoots down this theory deprive it of adherents? No, and the above paragraph goes a long way in explaining why. The problem with rationalism is that it affects how a mind deals with reality. One who starts by ignoring most of the data and sees deductive proof as some kind of a gold standard is unlikely to question such an "air-tight" case in the face of data that any old Joe can bring up. (Indeed a lack of respect for the minds of most other people is one common hallmark of rationalists.) This isn't to say that nobody can, with hard work, change his psycho-epistemology, but this case should highlight how hard it can be -- and why reaching someone like this is often a fruitless endeavor.
And so, most people will laugh off this theory, those who don't just laugh it off will ridicule it (or react with sarcasm since ...), and some will go to their graves convinced Derek Jeter's last at-bat was a fake.
-- CAV
* Regarding the possibility that Carson is serious: I know nothing about him, but many journalists, being of the leftist persuasion, make similar arguments all the time about "big business", hence my uncertainty.
9 comments:
This is why Gus Van Horn is my favorite blog. It not only identifies errors, but also explains their false epistemology. In this case, the rationalism behind the proposition that Derek Jeter’s last at bat could have been “orchestrated.”
I would point out that the very nature of the game makes ludicrous any notion that baseball could be “staged.”
The game revolves around the attempt to use a round stick (2.61 inches in diameter at its “sweet spot”) to hit a round ball that is 9 inches in circumference and that is traveling at 90 mph (from 60 feet away) to a place within the 90 degrees of “fair territory” that is beyond the reach of eight well positioned “fielders.”
These facts redound to one conclusion: There is much serendipity in baseball, which is why they call it “a game of averages.” It cannot be choreographed.
I think his last sentence pretty much proves Carson is not serious...'all the Texas instruments in the Staples store'...although the Barstool reader might have been.
As far as the probability of getting a hit goes; I remember my university statistics prof explaining to the class that reality is lumpy not smooth which means statistically unlikely events happen every moment of our lives. You see, the barstool reader doesn’t understand statistics nor natural phenomenon; nor did he include into his thinking all those baseball plays where the more likely event happened or the times when a retiring popular player did NOT get a hit in his last at bat. Did the bar stool reader run analyses to prove those were all legit?
You could do a similar analysis of all the plays in that game and I bet a whole lot of them would turn out to be statistically unlikely.
If you pick enough cards, eventually you WILL pick the three of diamonds. Then you can do a similar dance and proclaim…it was only a 1/52 chance; it must have been a set up! But don’t tell us how many tries it took you to get that card.
Steve,
Thanks for the compliment, and for pointing out in more detail how ridiculous the idea of staging a baseball game really is.
Steve D,
Agreed. Also, I leaned more towards believing Carson to be sarcastic until I read him again a few days later. His self-deprecation on mathematics made me less certain. I have no trouble believing the Barstool reader is serious. Why else go through that ridiculous amount of effort?
Gus
Adam Wainwright, pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, had every reason to try to get Jeter out in this year's All Star Game (the Cardinals have a considerable chance of representing the National League in the World Series, and the League which wins the All Star game gives it's representative team home field advantage in the World Series)... and yet he admitted that he intentionally threw Jeter a non-competitive pitch (even though he immediately back tracked, in a pitifully unbelievable denial).
So yeah, it's unlikely that the Orioles "laid one in there for Jeter", but in this day and age - where even baseball players are afflicted with the killer philosophical notions of "one man's gain is another man's loss" and "perception is reality" - it's entirely possible.
Grant,
Sure, but even then, math alone can't prove it.
Gus
Gus,
Yes, that's true, match alone can't prove it - but neither can anything less than full respect for the integrity of the game be ruled out. The fact that there's luck involved with getting a hit in that situation (hitting it cleanly, and not at a fielder) doesn't mean that the idea that the pitcher gave Jeter a "cookie" can be "rejected out of hand."
Grant,
In the post, I was rejecting the idea of this event being staged out of hand. That would involve a lot more than a "cookie" pitch.
Still, if someone is saying that the pitcher lobbed a cookie, the burden of proof is on the person who says it, not on me to disprove it. Even then, more than math is required. Furthermore, one pitcher's lack of integrity does not impugn another's.
Gus
Gus,
You're right. I agree with you that you can reject out of hand that the entire event (the Yankees giving up the lead in the top of the 9th inning, just to tie it back up in the bottom, just to have Jeter come to bat in a situation where he can end the game with a hit) was staged. I think I misunderstood you for semantical reasons. I was considering even a "cookie pitch" to constitute the event being "staged." Of course the onus would be upon anyone accusing that pitcher of that to prove it, and of course one pitcher's (lack of) character doesn't say anything about another's, but I wanted to make you aware of the Wainwright incident just so you would know that the event being less than 100% authentic is closer to the realm of possibility than a casual baseball fan like yourself probably thinks.
The cultural rot caused by altruism - where the pitcher who "denied" Jeter in his last at bat at Yankee Stadium would suffer a subtle, wordless hostility for the rest of his life - as well as by pragmatism - where the pitcher might be able to rationalize that giving Jeter the best chance to get a hit would be "good for the game" - should be enough by itself for any fair-minded person to seriously consider the possibility of less than complete authenticity, but having seen it play itself out in the All Star Game earlier this year is even more reason to consider it.
I know that, strictly speaking, that isn't what you were refusing to consider (so I'm definitely not accusing you of not being fair-minded), but I thought you would find it interesting nevertheless.
Grant
Grant,
Now that you put it this way, I have to concede that that is quite a plausible scenario:
"The cultural rot caused by altruism - where the pitcher who "denied" Jeter in his last at bat at Yankee Stadium would suffer a subtle, wordless hostility for the rest of his life..."
Ugh.
Gus
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