An NBA Team Built By Number
At the moment, my favorite NBA team to follow is the Houston Rockets.* They're not the fastest or the most athletic, but that's what I love about them. The Rockets' two big name, big money stars (Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady) have yet to play this year, yet the team has still played well all year and remained in the mix for an eventual playoff spot.
The direct inverse of my home town Warriors, the Rockets have been successful because of how they're built. Michael Lewis touched on this in his New York Times Magazine piece on Shane Battier, but really, that structure is a product of the Rockets' General Manager, Daryl Morey.
Daryl Morey’s has been an “experiment” unprecedented thus far in this league. Never before has a team predicated transactional decision-making primarily upon advanced statistical analysis. With the club exceeding all expectations, to some extent, Morey’s methods have been validated.
Due to the novelty of his approach, and the immediacy of his success, oft forgotten is it that we still lay merely in the earliest of stages in the shaping of this team. Only precious little is known of Daryl Morey’s managerial philosophy. The forethought with which he has guided the transformation of this roster would indicate some grander scheme yet to unfold. This is the subject of my intrigue.
via Discerning Morey’s Philosophy | Red 94 (hat tip to True Hoop).
* My favorite to watch? The Seattle Zombies.
Behavioral Advertising Today, Privacy Issues Tomorrow?
"It appears incredibly benign," he said of the categorization that Google and Yahoo were doing. "It almost makes some people who worry about privacy look foolish, because it says, 'You like bicycles.'"
"What is not shown in this kind of thing, and possibly because Google doesn’t do this sort of thing — maybe because they don’t implement it yet — are the various kinds of psychographic, demographic activities that go on behind the screens."
Also interesting is the fact that both Yahoo and Google allow you to opt-out of categories that you've been sorted into via their ad algorithms (Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin).
I'd been to Google's new Dashboard before, but hadn't realized that, well, there's where you need to go to opt-out, if that's what you wish to do. To opt-out of Yahoo's categories, visit their Interest Manager (nice Orwellian ad-speak, no?).
via At F.T.C. Conference, Concerns About Advertising and Privacy - Media Decoder Blog - NYTimes.com (via Prof. Tuthill).
Swap Machine’s NBA Stats
Brett Hainline’s swap machine uses a player’s offensive and defensive efficiency ratings to determine how swapping one player out for another would improve your team’s overall performance.
Once Hainline went live with it, I immediately did what any Los Angeles Clippers fan would do — nixed the uniquely inefficient Al Thornton from the starting lineup. To fill Thornton’s place at small forward, I opted for efficiency poster boy Shane Battier. I was interested in approximating how much better would the Clippers be with a player of Battier’s mold on the wing.
The results were fascinating. Queen City Hoops estimates that the Clippers would be 10 games better with Battier in Thornton’s place. Here’s QCH’s breakdown…
Tracking Obama
An action shot of the left hand that controls the Executive branch.*
Some friends and I have been interested in following and documenting Obama's actions now that he's President. We're curious to know whether he's living up to his campaign promises, and we thought it'd be useful to keep them in one easy-to-find place.
We started noting what we'd read in the news and sending it back and forth in an email thread, but really -- what is this, 1999? So I started a blog, and invited the friends as moderators. Unfortunately, we found that once our days picked up for a few hours, we quickly fell behind and started missing events. Not a very useful tool if it's ad hoc and incomplete.
Obama's first signature as president -- Jan. 20, 2009.
Brains beat brawn every time on the Internet, so off to Google my friend Chris went. For posterity, some useful resources are listed below.**
- Politifact is useful for tracking campaign promises and is being kept up to date.
- FactCheck.org is great for all recent claims made by politicians or floating around the rumor mill.
- FiveThirtyEight.com is Nate Silver's political stats and analysis site -- the best in the business.
- Whitehouse.gov tracks the various executive orders, which is kinda cool, too. So far...
EXECUTIVE ORDERS
January 22, 2009
- Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities
- Review of Detention Policy Options
- Ensuring Lawful Interrogations
January 21, 2009
- Presidential Records
- Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel
PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDA
January 22, 2009
- Review of the Detention of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri
January 21, 2009
- Freedom of Information Act
- Pay Freeze
- Transparency and Open Government
Still, Chris couldn't find a blog or other site that's just tracking what Obama does, what actions he approves or denies each day. Another oddity -- Kottke (citing others) also notes that once the new White House site goes up, the prior president's site disappears -- *poof* -- and is moved over to that president's library site.
All problems seem strange, given the ubiquity of this type of information. If anyone finds resources or tools that are particularly useful, please post in the comments.
* The President's watch is a Jorg Gray JGC6500 Chronograph Watch. Or you could go here and pay double...
** Many thanks to those willing and able to dedicate themselves to this work. Also key is Obama's dedication to transparency and the open, free exchange of information. So refreshing.
[First image via The Big Picture. Second image via Reuters, ffffound.]
The Economy Is In Worse Shape Than We Realize
Maybe some sacrificed chickens will fix the economy...
East Coast Economics has posted a dramatic visual explaining just how much borrowing our government has been doing over the last few months.
Check out the following which shows the $$$ amount borrowed by US banks from the Fed through Dec 2007; the spike marks the Savings & Loan Crisis at the end of the 1980s with borrowing maxing out at $8b.
[Then scroll down and] take a look at the [second] chart. It is the same graph as above, but [at a different scale, panned out, and] updated through the beginning of November ‘08.
So where is all of this borrowed money going? Paul Krugman delves into the details of the ongoing policy debate about how to deal with failing banks.
Old-fashioned voodoo economics - the belief in tax-cut magic - has been banished from civilized discourse. The supply-side cult has shrunk to the point that it contains only cranks, charlatans, and Republicans.
But recent news reports suggest that many influential people, including Federal Reserve officials, bank regulators, and, possibly, members of the incoming Obama administration, have become devotees of a new kind of voodoo: the belief that by performing elaborate financial rituals we can keep dead banks walking.
[Krugman sets up an excellent hypo detailing how this would work -- well worth reading.]
Why go through these contortions? The answer seems to be that Washington remains deathly afraid of the N-word - nationalization. The truth is that Gothamgroup and its sister institutions are already wards of the state, utterly dependent on taxpayer support; but nobody wants to recognize that fact and implement the obvious solution: an explicit, though temporary, government takeover.
Hence the popularity of the new voodoo, which claims, as I said, that elaborate financial rituals can reanimate dead banks.
Unfortunately, the price of this retreat into superstition may be high. I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that taxpayers are about to get another raw deal - and that we're about to get another financial rescue plan that fails to do the job.
[Both articles via Robot Wisdom, image by Olly Moss.]
Chicago Is The New Baltimore
Indicted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Life, as predicted by art.
Clay Davis, fictional, corrupt state Senator. Clay, Rod. Rod, Clay. Sheeeeeeeit.
My very favorite thing about The Wire is that the series, taken as a whole, is a five season, 60 hour meditation on America's broken systems and corrupted ideals.
The series is cynical and brutally honest, but its creators -- among them Ed Burns, George Pelecanos and David Simon -- are correct. If they have a weakness, it is that they may be a touch too cynical, though even then, they are not off the mark by much.
By "correct" I don't mean just that I agree with them. I mean that The Wire's creators have put out a testable hypothesis, which has been proven true by subsequent events. The Wire is not guesswork or arguing or opinion. The Wire is tested, verified, repeatable fact. Their argument is not faith, not option, not fiction -- The Wire is Truth.
Rationale and Theory
Since WWII, key systems in America have been developed and driven by one fundamental belief, first put into action by IBM, Robert McNamara, and Ayn Rand: decisions should be based on reasoned and objective analysis of statistics.
Make Sports Video Games Fun Again
RBI Baseball is rumored to make its return to the XBLA in 2009.
A friend picked up NBA Live '09 for the XBox 360 last weekend and had this to say:
It's complex, but you can win the NBA Championship using only the basic controls, which tells me all the advanced features are unnecessary. Hoops is all about running isos and hitting open jump shots -- I dont need to press 6 buttons to do that.
I couldn't agree more. Developers have, in their noble attempt to reach new heights in their quest for realism, made sports games too complex. They're becoming simulations that, realistic as they may be, aren't necessarily fun. Instead, developers should take a page from Mike Singletary and return to the fundamentals.
Developers should aim to make sports games with the following 10 Goals in mind:
- Consistent physics.
- Smart, fair AI.
- Updated graphics (cartoony or cel-shaded is fine... just make it look clean in HD).
- The latest licensed rosters.
- Seamless online play.
- Draft and Career modes that are quick to set up and easy to manage. (The original NES Baseball Stars is a great model).
- Minimal learning curve. I don't want to spend a month learning how to use every button on the control pad. I don't have time for that. Just because a game is simple doesn't mean it doesn't have depth. (For more, see Go, Chess, Bridge, Texas Hold'em.)
- The option to play short games that feel both fair and complete -- who wants to spend an hour on a single game?
- Polished interface design, including menus and statistics. Menus should look professional and be easy to figure out. No manual should be needed. Also, only useful stats should be kept. I don't need to know every detail, but I want to know the info that's shown in a standard ESPN boxscore. If obscure stats are used, let them flow naturally into the game -- maybe as pop-up stats or a ticker during the game. (See these links for more on elegant design and the importance of innovative details.)
- The game must, must, must be fun to play.
That's all I want. Is that so much to ask?
The recently-released update to Street Fighter II -- a 10 year old game -- is a perfect example of what I mean. Capcom didn't go overboard. Instead, they just took what worked, modified the engine to close a couple cheats and improve gameplay balance, added online play and updated the graphics. Simple. But the result is a beautiful game.
Produce updated versions of Tecmo Super Bowl, NBA Live '95 and RBI Baseball. I'll be a happy camper, and you'll have developed franchises that print money.
Obama Will Lower Taxes; $250K = Rich
Tax plans drawn to scale.
I've gotten into a few debates recently with friends who oppose Obama's tax plan for two main reasons: (1) they feel that raising the capital gains tax will hurt the national economy by discouraging investment and removing liquidity from the market; and (2) taxes are going up for those households making over $250,000 per year. That's not much money, they argue -- a good chunk of my friends have advanced degrees (with associated debt) and live in S.F. and NYC. If they want to even dream of owning their own apartment in a decent neighborhood, making that kind of money is a necessity.
If you agree with point number two, first take a look at the chart above, which shows how the tax plans of McCain and Obama will directly impact different segments of the population.*
Clear? Good. Welcome back. Next, Daniel Gross takes apart the second argument in his Slate article "The deluded Obama critics who think $250,000 is a middle-class salary."
Barack Obama's tax plan, . . . promises to improve the nation's fiscal standing by scaling back tax cuts for people making more than $250,000. Since then, the business pundit class has been griping that people who make $250,000 a year aren't really wealthy, especially if they live in and around New York; San Francisco; or Washington, D.C. . . . On Wednesday afternoon, CNBC's unscientific online poll found that (surprise!) only 35 percent of respondents believed an income of $250,000 qualified a household for elite rich status.
I have two pieces of bad news for the over-$250,000 crowd. First, the reversal of some of the temporary Bush tax cuts is probably inevitable, given the Republican fiscal clown show of the past eight years. Second, I regret to inform you that you are indeed rich. . . . [I]ncome data can surely tell us something. And they tell us that $250,000 puts you in pretty fancy company. The Census Bureau earlier this week reported that the median household income was $50,223 in 2007—up slightly from the last year but still below the 1999 peak. So a household that earned $250,000 made five times the median. In fact, as this chart shows, only 2.245 million U.S. households, the top 1.9 percent, had income greater than $250,000 in 2007. (About 20 percent of households make more than $100,000.)
In dealing with aggregate nationwide numbers, we should of course take account of the significant differences in the cost of living from state to state. . . . But even in wealthy states, $250,000 ain't bad—it's nearly four times the median income in wealthy states like Maryland and Connecticut. And even if you look at the wealthiest metropolitan areas—Washington, D.C. ($83,200); San Francisco ($73,851); Boston ($68,142); and New York ($61,554)—$250,000 a year dwarfs the median income.
Still feel that $250,000 isn't much money? Let me know why -- I'd love to discuss.
[Update -- According to this 1997 paper put out by the Fed [pdf], 1% of the population owns 82% of the stock market.]
* Looking at tax policy alone can be misleading, especially because of the radical differences in proposed health care plans.
SCOTUS April Fool's Joke: RBG's Fantasy Team
A blogger created a great April Fools joke when he wrote that:
The U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to decide whether fantasy sports players had a First Amendment right to use statistics provided by Major League Baseball.
Eric Turkewitz of the New York Personal Injury Law Blog wrote that five justices participate in a fantasy baseball league, but only three decided that their participation required their recusal. According to Turkewitz, those who recused were Justices John Paul Stevens, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Stephen G. Breyer. But Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg declined to disqualify themselves.
Though there is a real case on the matter that has applied for cert from the Supreme Court, the rest of the details were all part of the hoax.
Three clues "were deliberately buried," Turkewitz says. "The post was longer than it needed to be on the theory that people don’t read to the end of things."
I'm just hoping that Turkewitz is on to something. If even one of the Justices is a fantasy junkie, C will have much less reason to holler at me for checking box scores. (Well, so long as that one isn't Justice Thomas.)
Besides, RBG humor is always, always funny.
JD = no guarantee
According to an excellent report by the Wall Street Journal, law school graduates who are not in the top 10% of their class at all but the elite schools are having an increasingly difficult time finding work. Work that is found (outside of the big firms, of course) offers starting salaries more modest than in the past.
Evidence of a squeezed market among the majority of private lawyers in the U.S., who work as sole practitioners or at small firms, is growing. A survey of about 650 Chicago lawyers published in the 2005 book "Urban Lawyers" found that between 1975 and 1995 the inflation-adjusted average income of the top 25% of earners, generally big-firm lawyers, grew by 22% -- while income for the other 75% actually dropped.
To which I say cry me a river. The vast majority of law school graduates are still going to find quality work and earn a more-than-comfortable salary. What really caught my eye were these paragraphs:
[D]ebate is intensifying among law-school academics over the integrity of law schools' marketing campaigns. Defenders argue that the legal profession always has been openly and proudly a meritocracy: Top entrance-exam scores help win admittance to top schools where top students win jobs at top firms. Even the system that is used to issue law-school grades -- a curve that pits student against student -- reflects the law profession's competitiveness. . . . [The Dean of second-tier Loyola Law School] says it is problematic that big firms only interview the top of the class, "but that's the nature of the employment market; it's never been different."
. . .
"Prospective students need solid comparative data on employment outcomes, [but] very few law schools provide such data," adds Andrew Morriss, a law professor at the University of Illinois who has studied the market for new lawyers.
Students entering law school have little way of knowing how tight a job market they might face. The only employment data that many prospective students see comes from school-promoted surveys that provide a far-from-complete portrait of graduate experiences. Tulane University, for example, reports to U.S. News & World Report magazine, which publishes widely watched annual law-school rankings, that its law-school graduates entering the job market in 2005 had a median salary of $135,000. But that is based on a survey that only 24% of that year's graduates completed, and those who did so likely represent the cream of the class, a Tulane official concedes.
It often feels that my school has forgetten that Law School is a professional school. It's an investment, and our goal, as students, is to be prepared for and to land a job after we graduate. As an example, On Campus Interviews (OCI) are taking place right now, and the application process began in early August. Unbeknown to the majority of students, however, was the fact that our Office of Career Planning (OCP) is not as we left it in the Spring. Our entire staff (of 3, for 750 students) resigned, was released, or is on sabbatical. Upon returning this Fall, we found one new OCP attorney, with her Director not arriving until mid-September, long after OCI applications were due.
I'm sure there's an interesting back story here, and while we do seem to have upgraded our OCP staff, leaving students high and dry for OCI was a horrible means to that end. Some students at my school have lost out on interviews, quality internships, and possibly even jobs because Career Planning has not been enough of a priority for our administration. I can only hope that the positive reports I've heard and the positive acts I've seen from the newly hired staff marks a change in attitude at my law school.
For a larger discussion on the WSJ piece, see the WSJ Law Blog »