Stats in the Wild

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  • Atomic vs recursive

    So that’s what an atomic structure means.

    R also operates on objects called lists, which are of mode list. These are ordered sequences of objects which individually can be of any mode. lists are known as “recursive” rather than atomic structures since their components can themselves be lists in their own right.

    Cheers.

  • Some ENAR pictures

    Here is a view of the Capitol from just outside of ENAR.

    OBEY.

    And finally, for @CM_Litchfield, a picture of the Teamester’s headquarters.

    Cheers.

  • Madness Coefficient and Cinderella Plot updated through the Final Four

  • Time Series and the Final Four

  • MDS and the Final Four

  • Tyler Williams's avatarCausal Sports Fan

    Earlier this week, I linked to an interesting auction-based proposal to help improve fairness in NFL overtime games. Right now, the coin flip gives the winning team a boost more often than not (the only exception is if the winning team mistakenly takes the ball but has a VERY weak offense relative to its defense, or, likewise, if the losing team has a VERY strong defense, relative to its offense).

    The idea of the auction is to give each team “accurate” odds of winning by having them bid for the ball, using starting field position as currency. As you bid to start deeper and deeper in your own end, the odds of you scoring before your opponent drop. At some starting field position for each team (maybe around the 17 yard line), the odds should be close to fair

    View original post 324 more words

  • The “madness” has subsided

    After the craziest start to the NCAA tournament in 20+ years, the madness has died down a bit.  The Elite will feature three number 1 seeds, two number 2 seeds, a 3, 4, and a 7.

    Cheers.

  • NCAA Basketball Rankings – 3/21/2012

    Rankings as of 2:18pm on 3/21/2012.  Sagarin Ratings for games though 3/21/2012. AP rankings from 3/12/2012.

    In case anyone is interested, here are my rankings after the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament.  * indicates the team is in the Sweet Sixteen.

    Three teams are in the Sweet Sixteen that are not in my rankings: NC State, Ohio, and Xavier.

    Previous rankings are here.

    Breakdown by conference: 2, 4, 5, 3, 0, 2, 2, 2, 5

    ACC Big East Big Ten Big 12 Pac 12 SEC MWC MVC Other

    Team Rank Change Record AP Sagarin
    Kentucky* 1 – 34-2  1 1
    Syracuse* 2 – 33-2  2 4
    Michigan St.* 3 – 29-7  5 3
    Ohio St.* 4 – 29-7  7 2
    North Carolina* 5 ↑1 31-5  4 5
    Kansas* 6 ↑2 29-6  6 6
    Marquette* 7 ↑2 27-7  11 10
    Duke 8 ↓3 27-7  8 15
    Missouri 9 ↓2 30-5  3 9
    Baylor* 10 – 29-7  9 12
    Indiana* 11 – 27-8  16 8
    Wisconsin* 12 ↑1 26-9  14 7
    Louisville* 13 ↓1 28-9  17 16
    Creighton 14 ↑1 29-6  19 27
    Michigan 15 ↑1 29-7  13 25
    Georgetown 16 ↑1 24-9  15 13
    Murray St. 17 ↑1 31-2  12 38
    Wichita St. 18 ↓4 27-6  18 14
    Cincinnati* 19 ↑9 26-10  27 26
    Florida St. 20 ↓1 25-10  10 22
    Vanderbilt 21 – 25-11  20 19
    Florida* 22 ↑5 25-10  25 11
    Memphis 23 ↓3 26-9  29 18
    Gonzaga 24 ↑2 26-7  30 21
    St. Mary’s-CA 25 ↓3 27-6  24 36

    26-35: New Mexico, Temple, Saint Louis, Purdue, San Diego St., Iowa State, UNLV, Notre Dame, Alabama, Virginia

    BCS: My offer still stands…….if you want to contact me you can send me a tweet @StatsInTheWild.

    Cheers.

  • An interesting debate: Gelman vs Freakonomics

    An interesting debate between Andrew Gelman (and Kaiser Fung) and the Freakonomics authors, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt.
    It also appears that a good way to get mentioned on the Freakonomics blog is to accuse them of plagiarism (a very serious accusation).  So I’m going to accuse them of plagiarism, but only for the blog hits it might generate…….and now I’m going to retract my accusation of plagiarism an issue an apology to Dubner and Levitt:  I’d like to apologize to Dubner and Levitt for accusing them of plagiarism.  Please accept my apology.
    Cheers.
    P.S. Just to be super clear about this: That was a joke.  I am not actually accusing anyone of plagiarism.
    P.P.S.  It was a joke.

  • Tyler Williams's avatarCausal Sports Fan

    There’s a new paper out this month by Casey Ichniowski and Anne Preston concerning the NCAA tournament and the NBA draft (thanks to my PhD buddies Chris and Felipe for passing it along). Their argument is that unexpectedly strong tournament performance (especially team performance) causes players to be selected earlier in the NBA draft. This isn’t a bad thing though — in fact, they suggest that these strong tournament players tend to outperform their draft position in the NBA.

    I believe their results saying that tournament performance affects draft position (this has also been shown by Chaz Thomas in an undergraduate thesis, and by David Berri, Stacey Brook, and Aju Fenn), and I mostly believe their results that strong tourney performers should be drafted even earlier, though their set up is a little odd for this second issue.

    The clearest way to show that teams make mistakes in the…

    View original post 420 more words