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Spend a Fun Date Visiting a Houston Festival

While many may curse the heat of Houston’s summers, it is this mild weather that allows the city to put on many great festivals year-long. When you’re looking to make a first date a little more unique, look in to whether there’s something big going on. A trip to a festival can be an excellent way to learn more about the person you are with while having lots of fun. If you feel like taking in something cultural, try the Japan Festival that takes place during the middle of April. If it happens to be March, art lovers might want to check out the Bayou City Art Festival.

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Box office preview: Will 'Lone Survivor' come out on top?

This weekend, we've got two major new box office releases. Will they do well? That remains to be seen, but with so many excellent films out right now, it'll be competitive and theaters will likely be crowded. Lots of us were stuck at home last weekend because of bad weather, forced to watch DVDs from the cozy comforts of our couches (oh, the horror!). I was one of them, but I must confess: I've been itching to get out again. This weekend looks like the perfect time.

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The myth of "Blue Monday"

Certain cable news networks, perhaps desperate for new material at this slack time of the year, and always happy to latch onto a new catchphrase, have dubbed today (the first Monday of the new year) “Blue Monday.” The theory is that it’s the most depressing day of the year, between the post-holiday letdown and the generally lousy weather.

One slight problem being, there is absolutely no data to back up this claim. But they never let that stop them, do they?

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"Natural" and "Conditional" Effects

At BJOL this morning, James brought up a new paradigm -- the issue of "Natural" and "Conditional" effects.

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The current use of closers is not as irrational as models may make it look because these are human beings. I have managed a lot of different types of workers over the years. In general, people are a lot more effective when they know what is going to be expected of them. A closer who can get into a routine, pace himself, watch the score and get himself physically and mentally ready as necessary may be a more effective pitcher. Trying to identify the highest leverage use puts him in a situation where he has to prepared to go in at any time in the game, it assumes that the manager knows when to best use him, it risks warming him up a couple of times and not bringing him in... So while not theoretically ideal, in real life bullpen roles may help pitchers to be more effective when they are used and takes away what could become a very complicated calculus from a manager. And that may be worth the trade off. Plus, of course, for the reliever, a certain status from being a closer.
Asked by: raincheck
Answered: 12/23/2013
Well. . .I think you are sort of on the corner of the truth there. I don't doubt that what you are saying is true; it's a little imprecise. Combining this issue and the issue we were also discussing, about why runs scored are low in post-season. .. . 1) We sometimes tend to assume, in our field, that you can manage real players the way you would manage an ABPA or Strat-o-Matic team, 2) This assumption is very useful, in that it flies in the face of a lot of conventional wisdom which is actually nonsense, but 3) This assumption is not absolutely valid, either.
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Conventional wisdom ties together all manner of performance units into imaginary packages. Conventional wisdom, for example, holds that hitting is contagious, when in reality it is not. Conventional wisdom assumes that if a hitter has 8 hits in his last 11 at bats, he is red hot (and thus more likely to get a hit in his next at bat), whereas if he is 0-for-15, he is "cold", and thus less likely to get a hit in his next at bat. Conventional wisdom believes that if you put Good Hitter B in the lineup behind Good Hitter A, that will make Good Hitter A a better hitter, when in reality it will not. Conventional wisdom insists that if you put a fast base runner on base, the next hitter will see more fastballs and thus will hit better, when in reality he will not. These are major assumptions that we hear constantly, but there are a thousand more like them that we hear occasionally or infrequently.
Clutch hitting is a conditional effect--a major one, obviously. If a pitcher has to run the bases, the announcer will question whether this will cause him to lose effectiveness the next inning, although studies have shown no such effect. Generally speaking, whenever the sportswriter or announcer tries to tie together one event in a baseball game with another, he is usually spouting nonsense, and one should generally ignore him. Tim McCarver would insist to the end of his career that if a leadoff man drew a walk, it was dramatically more likely that he would score (and dramatically more likely that there would be a big inning) than if the leadoff man hit a single. Sometimes he would put a number with this supposed difference. In reality, there is no difference whatsoever; a leadoff walk has exactly the same effect as a leadoff single. Another popular one is the idea that after Team A scores a run, it is really important for them to have a "shut down inning", and prevent the other team from "answering" the run.
In our area we tend to ignore this kind of blather, and assume that each player has a skill set and each combination of players has a set of probable outcomes, which are the same without regard to who is on deck, whether there is a fast runner on base, whether the runner on first reached by hit or error, etc.
Players are players; they do what they do. This is generally true, but it is not ABSOLUTELY true.
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I like to distinguish between NATURAL effects, which are those effects which would be replicated in a simulation (or table game) of ordinary sophistication, and CONDITIONAL effects, which are those effects which are dependent on conditions of the game, and would NOT be replicated in a simulation or table game of ordinary sophistication.

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