Mike's notes.
In the first post we jumped off with the idea that the S&P500 is an unbalanced collection of stocks. The top five companies, noted Carl Kawaja, generate 22% of the earnings, so why not only ‘bet on’ the best? This led to thinking about predictability. Chess is easier to predict than my morning pickleball game. … Continue reading Favorites or the field? (part two)
“There’s a great point in your book,” host Adi Wyner says, “where your coach tells you you’re coming in too high in the tournaments.” “This realization happens pretty early on. It’s six months into my poker playing and I’m very happy I’ve been cashing in poker tournaments. Say you buy in for $100, but the … Continue reading Creativity through randomness
It’s time to update two of our ongoing projects. First, to revisit the idea of Aaron Rodgers throwing less than 38.5 touchdowns. The point in parts one and two were to not think specifically about what might happen but think about the states of what could happen. We reasoned there were a lot more things … Continue reading Tailing Aaron Rodgers (part three)
Maxim Five: low probability events When a low probability event occurs (say an underdog wins a sports championship), we tend to come up with reasons why we might have expected it. This phenomenon is often referred to as hindsight bias, a tendency to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. … Continue reading Daters, scammers, and Zeckhauser
One decision making suggestion is to start with the base rate, to find a set of comparable circumstances and ask, ‘what typically happens?’ In investing it is to find the price of, say Amazon, and ask how often a company of those characteristics grew at an expected percentage. Rather than start with the idea that … Continue reading Base rate and mean reversion structure
The success equation notes that results are combinations of skill and luck. Some parts of life have a larger luck outcome than others. So, to improve, we look at the skill slice. Poker’s appeal is this idea. Play more hands with positive expected value. But not every sport is as clean as poker. Football, for … Continue reading Three star recruits
One way to think about “adoption” is as series of hurdles. If something is “adopted” it has succeeded by crossing the set of hurdles. There are few food bacteria “adoptions” because of hurdle technology: hot, cold, salt, and acid all make the process harder for food bacteria to survive. Another metaphor for this approach is … Continue reading Hurdling past covid
“Between the Chiefs, Bucs, Packers and Bills there’s a fifty percent chance of one of those four teams winning the Super Bowl. In other words, you can have those four teams or the other twenty-eight in the league.” – Cade Massey, Wharton Moneyball, August 2021 Take the other twenty-eight! This idea holds in both sports … Continue reading Football ’21 favorites or field?
“Statisticians are sometimes dismissed as bean counters. The sneering term is misleading as well as unfair. Most of the concepts that matter in policy are not like beans; they are not merely difficult to count, but difficult to define…the truth is more subtle yet in some ways easier: our confusion often lies less in numbers … Continue reading A confusing life expectancy calculation
“Statisticians are sometimes dismissed as bean counters. The sneering term is misleading as well as unfair. Most of the concepts that matter in policy are not like beans; they are not merely difficult to count, but difficult to define…the truth is more subtle yet in some ways easier: our confusion often lies less in numbers … Continue reading A confusing life expectancy calculation
The Waiter's Pad 