Economist wants pokertracker database hands

[gergery]

wanna be famous? (http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/06/wed-like-to-put-some-freak-into-game.html)

[StevieG]

[ QUOTE ]
wanna be famous? (http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/06/wed-like-to-put-some-freak-into-game.html)

[/ QUOTE ]

He wants someone to hand him a database of a million plus hands and the payoff is "we are confident we can help you be a better poker player. Heck, we'll even throw in a freakonomics t-shirt."

Yeah, that's freakonimcally adequate compensation, all right.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]

Yeah, that's freakonimcally adequate compensation, all right.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah I'm sure he's just doing it so he can set up an account on the same site you play at and, with his newfound knowledge of all your Super Secret Poker Moves, "totally pwn" you online.

[DesertCat]

This economist is a tool. He wrote a "study" of Billy Beane and the Oakland A's that was hilariously poorly conceived. I question whether he's capable of rational thought.

[ClaytonN]

I couldn't help but reply.

Flog me, if you must.

[Joe826]

damn i thought you meant the magazine. i would have sold my soul.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
This economist is a tool. He wrote a "study" of Billy Beane and the Oakland A's that was hilariously poorly conceived. I question whether he's capable of rational thought.

[/ QUOTE ]

His book "Freakonomics" was pretty good, I must say /images/graemlins/smile.gif.

I couldn't find the original "study"/article/whatever it was, but I did find a follow-up one where he responds to some of the concerns people had about it - snippets below:

[ QUOTE ]
Besides, the point I am making is so simple that it doesn't require complicated analysis to demonstrate. Oakland was average on offense and phenomenal on pitching. You can control for whatever you want, that story absolutely will not change. So how can you argue that hitting is the reason Oakland won so many games? And I don't think it is reasonable to say that Oakland won't do well in the future because the inefficiencies in the market for OBP have been driven away. Probably they have been driven away, but they were never that important anyway. If Beane were so smart, would he have let Michael Lewis give away the keys to the castle? I doubt it.

...
For all of you who disagree with me - and the betting markets - go to tradesports and bet on the A's. The market thinks they will only win 82 games. If they are as good as you believe, there is a lot of money to be made. And after you all bet and drive the odds up, I will bet the other side.

[/ QUOTE ]

Seems pretty confident in his opinion, at least.

[AnyAce]

I have not read the A's piece, so I don't know if its messed up.

However, he did win the Clark Medal for best economist under 40 (2nd most prestigious award in economics after the Nobel).

Levitt wins John Bates Clark Medal (http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/030501/levitt.shtml)
AA

[sfer]

[ QUOTE ]
This economist is a tool. He wrote a "study" of Billy Beane and the Oakland A's that was hilariously poorly conceived. I question whether he's capable of rational thought.

[/ QUOTE ]

He is likely going to win a Nobel Prize if he lives long enough. He's already on the short list and he's under 50.

[Jordan Olsommer]

From what I read, the prize that he's already won (which I can't remember the name of offhand and am too lazy to google at the moment, so I'll just refer to it as the Stanley Clarke prize, because I recall it having the name "clark" in it and also because Stanley Clarke is such a great bass player) is more prestigious in the circle of economists than the Nobel Prize is. So compared to his Stanley Clarke prize, the Nobel just ain't that funky.

It would be funny to see him up there in ridiculous tuxedo saying the word "freakonomics" in his speech, though.

[sfer]

[ QUOTE ]
From what I read, the prize that he's already won (which I can't remember the name of offhand and am too lazy to google at the moment, so I'll just refer to it as the Stanley Clarke prize, because I recall it having the name "clark" in it and also because Stanley Clarke is such a great bass player) is more prestigious in the circle of economists than the Nobel Prize is. So compared to his Stanley Clarke prize, the Nobel just ain't that funky.

It would be funny to see him up there in ridiculous tuxedo saying the word "freakonomics" in his speech, though.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's John Bates Clark and it's mentioned in this thread. It's given every 2 years to an an American economist under 40. Exclusivity is debatable, but his achievement really isn't.

[turnipmonster]

[ QUOTE ]
because Stanley Clarke is such a great bass player

[/ QUOTE ]

school days!

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
It's John Bates Clark and it's mentioned in this thread. It's given every 2 years to an an American economist under 40.

[/ QUOTE ]

joke Pronunciation Key (jk)
n.

1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.
2. A mischievous trick; a prank.
3. An amusing or ludicrous incident or situation.
4. Informal.
1. Something not to be taken seriously; a triviality: The accident was no joke.
2. An object of amusement or laughter; a laughingstock: His loud tie was the joke of the office.

[BottlesOf]

So Daryn...

[DesertCat]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This economist is a tool. He wrote a "study" of Billy Beane and the Oakland A's that was hilariously poorly conceived. I question whether he's capable of rational thought.

[/ QUOTE ]

His book "Freakonomics" was pretty good, I must say /images/graemlins/smile.gif.

I couldn't find the original "study"/article/whatever it was, but I did find a follow-up one where he responds to some of the concerns people had about it - snippets below:

[ QUOTE ]
Besides, the point I am making is so simple that it doesn't require complicated analysis to demonstrate. Oakland was average on offense and phenomenal on pitching. You can control for whatever you want, that story absolutely will not change. So how can you argue that hitting is the reason Oakland won so many games? And I don't think it is reasonable to say that Oakland won't do well in the future because the inefficiencies in the market for OBP have been driven away. Probably they have been driven away, but they were never that important anyway. If Beane were so smart, would he have let Michael Lewis give away the keys to the castle? I doubt it.

...
For all of you who disagree with me - and the betting markets - go to tradesports and bet on the A's. The market thinks they will only win 82 games. If they are as good as you believe, there is a lot of money to be made. And after you all bet and drive the odds up, I will bet the other side.

[/ QUOTE ]

Seems pretty confident in his opinion, at least.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem with his analysis is that he relies on a straw man argument. His original quote "There's very little evidence Billy Beane [the club's general manager] is doing something right" was absurd.

His central problem was he tried to disprove Moneyball, by pointing out that the A's offensive stats weren't much better than other AL West teams. He claimed that Moneyball implied that the A's succeed by having a higher OBP than other teams, while in reality they had better pitching. Then he hit Billy with another cheap shot, that he was "genius" for getting a sweet deal from the new owner, before starting to rebuild the team.

First of all, Moneyball is a pleasantly enjoyable book, not a theorem. Secondly, despite his misrepresentations, the book doesn't make one central claim, other than that Beane exploited market inefficiencies. Levitt ignored the fact that Oakland's average offensive performance was built on half the payroll of the other AL West teams. And that Beane built a great pitching staff by drafting undervalued college pitchers instead of overvalued high school pitchers, which Moneyball discusses in depth.

Basically Levitt didn't do his research, got everything wrong, and was bombarded mercilessly for it. There has been a great deal of interesting research in baseball (some of which Moneyball summarizes), and he was arrogant enough to think he could start at ground zero and disprove all of it.

So basically I'm still on tilt from this sorry episode. He's actually a really bright guy. I shouldn't let a flip little comment and exercise by Levitt drive my entire opinion of him. If the SOB would admit how poor his analysis in the example was I could. Then I could read his book, which I really want to, but am refusing to until he shows some humility.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
Secondly, despite his misrepresentations, the book doesn't make one central claim, other than that Beane exploited market inefficiencies.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then why would he allow Lewis to publish the book, an act which would instantly eradicate those inefficiences by making them public?

[ QUOTE ]
Levitt ignored the fact that Oakland's average offensive performance was built on half the payroll of the other AL West teams.

[/ QUOTE ]

But they had a median payroll in 2004, and they didn't continue their upward trajectory in performance, did they?

[ QUOTE ]
There has been a great deal of interesting research in baseball (some of which Moneyball summarizes), and he was arrogant enough to think he could start at ground zero and disprove all of it.

[/ QUOTE ]

From what I have read, he didn't try to start from ground zero and disprove all of baseball statistical theory. All he said was that the OBP stat which was championed as being undervalued in Moneyball wasn't nearly as undervalued as was claimed, and that like you said, the A's succeeded because they had better pitching than the other teams - their offense was middle of the pack.

This is illustrated in this (http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/04/will-real-billy-beane-please-stand-up.html) post:

[ QUOTE ]


Billy Beane's devotees (who have been quite vocal in response to my past postings) would have you think that the way Oakland's offense generate runs is very different from the way other teams generate runs. As usual, my view is that we should let the data speak. I have assembled the average yearly offensive statistics for five American League teams over the period 2000-2004. The statistics are as follows:

Team.......HR.....AVG......OBP.....SLG......OPS... ....R.....SO.......BB
Team A...200...0.276...0.348...0.454...0.802...867...10 45...591
Team B...222...0.271....0.351...0.450...0.801...865...1 022...638
Team C...202...0.264...0.343...0.436...0.778...838...10 29...633
Team D...193...0.269...0.341...0.437....0.778...829...1 041...575
Team E...159...0.275....0.349..0.422....0.771...828...1 022...619

So two questions for baseball fans:

1) One of these five teams is Oakland. Which one?

2) When you compare these statistics, do you really feel comfortable suggesting that the reason that Oakland has been so incredibly successful can be attributed to the fact that they are following a different offensive strategy than other teams that have achieved roughly the same measure of success (as measured by runs generated)?

[/ QUOTE ]

From what I've seen, he's been able to back up his claims with some data. If you want to continue your claim that Levitt didn't do his research and conducted his argument in a poor fashion, you're going to need some as well.

[ceczar]

[ QUOTE ]
If you want to continue your claim that Levitt didn't do his research and conducted his argument in a poor fashion, you're going to need some as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really think it's mostly about attitude here. He comes off as very arrogant, even when discussing issues for which he has only a cursory understanding. To people who read a lot about baseball from analytical sources, the way he has seemed to approach this issue betrays his general ignorance of basic sabermetric results and consensus. And it's not because he has studied the issues yet come to superior conclusions, but rather that he thinks his common sense understanding of the situation is enough. It's frustrating for anyone who previously held Steve in such high regard for his fascinating work, because one would expect someone of his intellectual caliber to not be confused by moneyball so thoroughly. he talks about moneyball in a way that implies a very naive understanding of what the book was about.
i wouldn't be surprised if some of the issues that he has raised in his criticism have some value and should be looked into further, but the way he discusses the issue is very grating for those with more background on the issues than he.

also, for some backup for moneyball: SSRN Paper (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=618401)

it's probably not just baseball. i can only imagine how many sociologists must feel after reading Levitt's analysis that may illustrate an interesting relationship but that totally ignore decades of research from people in the field.

[sfer]

[ QUOTE ]
Then I could read his book, which I really want to, but am refusing to until he shows some humility.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess you won't be reading most 2+2 books then.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
I really think it's mostly about attitude here. He comes off as very arrogant, even when discussing issues for which he has only a cursory understanding.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is pretty much the same as the post I responded to - saying "I think Levitt is full of it with this Moneyball business" is fine, but for anyone to give it more credence than "I like broccoli", you need to show where it's wrong. So far from the posts I read from Levitt, he's shown, through data, that the Athletics are a middle-of-the-pack team on offense, and that their current performance belies something other than a secret formula revolving mostly around OBP. Not to mention the other fact he mentioned; namely, if you have the key to exploiting enormous inefficiences in the baseball scouting market, why on earth would you publish it in a book? The amount of money generated by a small cut of a successful book is a pittance compared to the amount an owner would get by continuing to exploit these inefficiences, even if the book somehow manages to hump the New York Times bestseller list for months on end.

Or, like he said, you could just bet on the A's who are rated to win 82 games this season - if the management are in fact such geniuses, then it stands to reason that you'll make quite a killing if you put your money on Oakland.

[ceczar]

[ QUOTE ]
So far from the posts I read from Levitt, he's shown, through data, that the Athletics are a middle-of-the-pack team on offense, and that their current performance belies something other than a secret formula revolving mostly around OBP.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nothing about this disproves anything related to the book, except for strawmen arguments setup by readers who don't realize the true point of the book.

[ QUOTE ]
Not to mention the other fact he mentioned; namely, if you have the key to exploiting enormous inefficiences in the baseball scouting market, why on earth would you publish it in a book? The amount of money generated by a small cut of a successful book is a pittance compared to the amount an owner would get by continuing to exploit these inefficiences, even if the book somehow manages to hump the New York Times bestseller list for months on end.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nothing in the book was groundbreaking. It was all old news. all of that information was available before, and has been for a long time. if people didn't use the information available to them before, why would they use it after being published this time? sure it kind of smacks them in the face with it, but they're not really giving anything away. it was a book meant for the public, many of whom would not be familiar with these concepts. it shouldn't have really provided anything too interesting to baseball people. The point of the book was the approach: the systematic, analytical approach to player evaluation and the questioning of conventional wisdom. michael lewis trumped up certain aspects of the A's approach to tell a story, and he didn't emphasize everything he could or should have, but the point of the story is much more general than you and levitt are trying to make it out to be. i imagine the stuff they really are doing that's interesting has to do with defense, or something else for which the publicly available data and analysis is pretty immature at the moment.

this discussion isn't meant to be a proof about why Levitt is wrong about his conclusions, but an explanation of why baseball people are irritated by his treatment of the subject. if you look at all of the great baseball sources on the web, you'll find that not one of the good ones even acknowledges levitt's criticism. this isn't because what he said offended the sabermetric conventional wisdom, but because he didn't say anything interesting or provide any usefull analysis. he just blends in with the thousands of journalists who have said uninteresting or stupid things about moneyball over the past 3 years. it's frustrating that he hasn't taken the time to educate himself about the current state of the art in the field. many people make mistakes trying to reinvent the wheel. it has made me question whether he really is this lazy regarding fields i know much less about.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
it's frustrating that he hasn't taken the time to educate himself about the current state of the art in the field.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, all the arguments against what he says about Moneyball have been stated something along the lines of "he just doesn't understand baseball statistics and analysis." Well, that just doesn't cut it for someone who wants to learn more about the world. He posed an interesting question: if these people are on to something that huge, firstly they wouldn't publish it (doesn't matter if the statistics are available to all; if you notice a market inefficiency, you have an enormous informational asymmetry advantage, and you're not going to give that up for a tiny cut of the authors' tiny cut of a books' proceeds), and secondly, why are the A's not nearly as good anymore (to the best of my knowledge)?

anyway, here's a good snippet of what he said he wasn't trying to prove:

[ QUOTE ]


To save people who are going to post comments time, let me also make clear what I am not arguing:

1)I am not denying the A's have been remarkably successful in the recent years.

2)I am not denying that their success is even more remarkable given their limited budget, especially in the early years.

3) I am not denying that they were innovators in using statistics to evaluate performance.

4) I am not denying that Moneyball was a fun book to read.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ceczar]

[ QUOTE ]
He posed an interesting question: if these people are on to something that huge, firstly they wouldn't publish it (doesn't matter if the statistics are available to all; if you notice a market inefficiency, you have an enormous informational asymmetry advantage, and you're not going to give that up for a tiny cut of the authors' tiny cut of a books' proceeds)

[/ QUOTE ]

That's not an interesting question. The fact that OBP had been undervalued by a lot of baseball teams had been written about ad nauseum (sp?) by a variety of sources. It's like fish and public availability of 2+2 and the books. They really are that stupid, and they will continue to be so. The fact that the A's thought there were inefficiencies in the scouting market is not information by itself. they have very complex evaluation and projection tools, and i imagine they are still quite secret.

but i already said that in my last post, and you still brought it up as if i hadn't. maybe you'll ask someone to address this a third time.

[ QUOTE ]
and secondly, why are the A's not nearly as good anymore (to the best of my knowledge)

[/ QUOTE ]

they're underperforming this year because their hitters are underperforming reasonable projections of their performance. you can have good ideas on how to build a team, not overpaying for overvalued skills and whatever else, but still your players have to perform. and when your best player plays like crap for 2 months, your record will suffer. when you have to let league MVPs bolt to free agency, you will have to rebuild through younger players, which takes longer and is more volatile. when they traded away their best pitchers last year, they were making decisions based on the long term, and may in fact have made themselves worse for this year for the sake of the ability to compete in the future.

again, this discussion started because some people noted their annoyance with Levitt over his baseball comments, and some others countering that they were being unfair to him, as his comments are reasonable. i'm not trying to educate you on sabermetrics, just trying to explain the source of the annoyance, that he brought up annoying questions that were a bit naive but in a totally arrogant know-it-all way. i'm sure you can make your own poker analogy. it's a waste of everyone's time for anyone here to try to argue against Steve's claims, because that's not really the point.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]


they're underperforming this year because their hitters are underperforming reasonable projections of their performance. you can have good ideas on how to build a team, not overpaying for overvalued skills and whatever else, but still your players have to perform. and when your best player plays like crap for 2 months, your record will suffer.

[/ QUOTE ]

Levitt posted a list of five AL teams' stats from 2000-2004, all of which were nearly indistinguishable and one of which were the stats of the Oakland A's. So it hardly seems to me to be just a 'bad run'

[ QUOTE ]

Team.......HR.....AVG......OBP.....SLG......OPS... ....R.....SO.......BB
Team A...200...0.276...0.348...0.454...0.802...867...10 45...591
Team B...222...0.271....0.351...0.450...0.801...865...1 022...638
Team C...202...0.264...0.343...0.436...0.778...838...10 29...633
Team D...193...0.269...0.341...0.437....0.778...829...1 041...575
Team E...159...0.275....0.349..0.422....0.771...828...1 022...619

So two questions for baseball fans:

1) One of these five teams is Oakland. Which one?

2) When you compare these statistics, do you really feel comfortable suggesting that the reason that Oakland has been so incredibly successful can be attributed to the fact that they are following a different offensive strategy than other teams that have achieved roughly the same measure of success (as measured by runs generated)?

[/ QUOTE ]

but i already said that in my previous posts, and you still brought it up as if i hadn't. maybe you'll ask someone to address this a third time. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ceczar]

[ QUOTE ]
Levitt posted a list of five AL teams' stats from 2000-2004, all of which were nearly indistinguishable and one of which were the stats of the Oakland A's. So it hardly seems to me to be just a 'bad run'

[/ QUOTE ]
i think you're a bit confused here. they were really good from 2000-03. the fact that they had stats that were quite similar to other teams was supposed to be a point against OBP being a primary cause of their success. it wasn't supposed to be an example of their ineptitude. over the last X years Oakland has the most or second or third most wins in baseball, and the wins per dollar spent on payroll is what they are trying to be measured against. the whole point of moneyball was money. by taking money out of the chart levitt has constructed a strawman. when i saw that chart i was neither surprised nor interested. it was a misplaced attack.

this is what levitt says:

[ QUOTE ]
When you compare these statistics, do you really feel comfortable suggesting that the reason that Oakland has been so incredibly successful can be attributed to the fact that they are following a different offensive strategy than other teams that have achieved roughly the same measure of success (as measured by runs generated)?

[/ QUOTE ]
i don't think anyone is claiming that. maybe the sportswriters who were reading about this stuff for the first time made that claim. the whole point of the story was the beane tried to go against conventional wisdom to find undervalued skills. the fact that high-obp, low BA players were undervalued was just one facet of that. but it's not at all obvious that a team which favors a certain skill would actually have more of that skill, because of payroll constraints.

[ QUOTE ]
but i already said that in my previous posts, and you still brought it up as if i hadn't. maybe you'll ask someone to address this a third time

[/ QUOTE ]

i have tried to say this already. i wasn't trying to disprove levitt's claim. it's possible he's making a relevant claim. but the very way he (and you) talk about the book make his biases and background quite clear, yet he still presents his point in arrogant and all-knowing tone.

is it possible that there has become some sort of "conventional wisdom" within the sabermetric community that should be challenged further? of course. and levitt would love to be the guy who does just that. but it seems that his greatest advantage is in attacking fields or ideas with quantitative methods where they have not been used before, He thus can uncover new relationships, etc and is able to make contributions even though he doesn't have a real background in the field in question. but he will have trouble doing that with baseball, as too many people have already been doing just that for many years.

criticizing moneyball and beane is the way that conventional people criticize sabermetrics in general. if he had something real to add, he would realize that his problem is not with beane but Lewis for his sensationalistic writing, or he would pick a specific issue that has reached conventional wisdom status among the stat community and show why it's wrong.

[DesertCat]

[ QUOTE ]
Levitt posted a list of five AL teams' stats from 2000-2004, all of which were nearly indistinguishable and one of which were the stats of the Oakland A's. So it hardly seems to me to be just a 'bad run'

[/ QUOTE ]

You (and Levitt originally, until he backed off when shown his absurdity) are missing the most important point about his table of stats. The A's were not only below below the league median payroll, but all of the rest of the AL West was above it.

Payroll (2000-2004)
Texas $422M
Seattle $383M
Anaheim $339M
Median MLB $327M
Oakland $215M

Oakland trailed the average MLB team by $100M ($20M per year) in payroll during this stretch. Oakland's average yearly payroll was $43M, their competition in the AL West (where they play most of their games) averaged $76M, almost double! Oakland's competition had one WS winner, one team that won 116 regular season games, and multiple 100 win seasons during this stretch.

What Levitt actually demonstrated is that Moneyball's core contention is correct, that Billy Beane is doing something very special. To have similar offensive performance to teams outspending you almost 2-1 is amazing.

Oakland's wins per dollar of salary is outstanding. Minnesota does almost as well, but in a division that's been devoid of any good teams.

As far as your other comments. Moneyball is a fun book, but it's a mishmash of anecodotes and old, well known sabremetric principles. It describes "market inefficiencies" that were discovered and debated in the 80's and 90's. Billy Beane isn't telling anyone what inefficiencies still exist that Oakland exploits, if any. Due to the number of teams hiring sabremetric analysts, the market may be too efficient now. Oakland may not have much of an edge going forward.

As far as this years team goes, it's horribly underperformed on offense. Levitt and others predicted it would fail on defense, because Beane traded his top pitchers. But that's not true, their pitching has actually been close to average, and looks to get much better as the new young pitchers mature.

And if you've followed them this week, you can see that the offense has finally come around. It may be too late for them to make a run, given their young pitching staff, but they will clearly score more for the remainder of the year. All of their key offensive players are near their primes and have career OPS's 15-20% higher than their 2005 performance to date, i.e. in poker lingo they've been running cold.

And Levitt has admitted in his arrogant backhand manner to making most of the mistakes I've detailed here, but he still acts like an abnoxious tool.