Apologies for the slow posts… but the NYT explains:
Wall Street trading is often described as a blood sport. But inside the great investment houses, the sport of the moment is, of all things, curling — that oddball of the Olympics that is sort of like shuffleboard on ice.
This slow-poke game, which originated in 16th-century Scotland, has captivated the Type-A world of Wall Street almost by accident. CNBC, whose market chatter is the background music on trading floors, switches to curling from Vancouver shortly after the closing bell.
I thought I was the only one going curling-crazy, but it turns out all of Wall Street has spent the last couple weeks learning a new vocabulary (just call me “Skip”) and shouting at the TV. Whether or not everyone else has been honing their skills by playing shuffleboard, I don’t know… but my plan to open an NYC curling house/alley/place (?) just got a major boost.
Apologies in advance for the absolutely terrible/fantastic title.
The winner of the 2009 contest for the Best Visual Illusion of 2009 is particularly appropriate tonight as the Yankees strive to hand the Phillies their second championship in as many years. The prize was won by a team that has identified the core difficulty in hitting a curveball: it’s not where you think it is.
The illusion arises because the seams on the ball spin sideways when a curveball is thrown. When the ball is seen in the batter’s peripheral vision, the brain infers from the sideways motion of the seams that the ball itself is traveling sideways, even if it is not. Conversely, when the ball is seen by the batter’s central vision system, the sideways visual cue is ignored, presumably because the image of the ball itself on the retina is more a more convincing indicator of it’s position.
Critically, not only does the ball appear to drift when viewed by the peripheral system, but when it transitions from central to peripheral vision it appears to jump from one position to another! So the combined effect is: the ball is physically curving through space AND when it reaches the peripheral vision system it is perceived to jump from one position to another AND while in the peripheral system it appears to drift sideways in addition to its actual curve.
The authors argue that this explains the phenomenon of curveballs “breaking” suddenly. A curveball which hangs – that is, one that doesn’t break – likely isn’t spinning at the right speed to set off the illusion.
But don’t take my word for it: try the illusion out for yourself.
(via Newsweek)
It’s an extraordinarily sad state of affairs when you can come to this country at the age of 12 as a refugee, train as a gifted runner in San Diego junior high and high schools, attend UCLA as an incredible four-time All-American award winner, become a naturalized US citizen as you graduate college, compete in the Olympics and win a silver medal for the United States and finally become the first American to win the NYC Marathon since 1982… and still have people insist you’re not an American?!
The Times has an article about the Mets Fan’s Dilemma: who to root for in this year’s World Series?
[T]he misery of this uninspired season has been unexpectedly heightened by the indignity of watching their most despised division rival face off against their despised crosstown rival in the World Series
For me, the question is simple: I’ve never rooted for the Yankees and I’m not about to start now. On the other hand, I can remember cheering on the Phillies when they were playing Atlanta (though it’s funny how that has reversed). For all this talk of division rivalry, the Phillies are hardly the reason the Mets haven’t been playing any meaningful baseball lately – the sad truth is that the Mets are their own worst division rival, three years running.
The goal of any automotive film is to convey the pure sensation of driving at speed – and few are as successful as Ferrari’s latest promotion for the new 458 Italia, embedded here for your driving pleasure. The disclaimer in the beginning notes that no special effects are used and the implied message is that the cars do all their own stunts. Nonetheless, the film is obviously heavily scripted and post-processed. Not that I mind in the slightest:
(Interestingly, watching in full screen – which you should of course do – removes the vertical letterboxing exhibited in the small player.)
Wikipedia is an incredible resource, but every now and then it gives me pause. Consider the first two sentences about the seventh-inning stretch:
The seventh-inning stretch is a tradition in baseball that takes place between the halves of the seventh inning of any game. Fans generally stand up and stretch out their arms, legs, necks, backs, calves, fingers, elbows, and other muscles and sometimes walk around.
Is the whole list really necessary?
The Mets just can’t catch a break:
On a day when Mets starter Oliver Perez allowed six runs in the first inning, the Mets were in a position to win in the ninth with one swing of the bat, only to be thwarted by one of the rarest plays in baseball.
Eric Bruntlett pulled off an unassisted triple play in the ninth inning, the 15th in major league history and just the second to end a game.
Unfortunately, despite having one of the most advanced online presences among professional sports leagues, MLB’s media lockdown (no rebroadcasting without “expressed written consent”) means I have to send you here to see the play in action.
The WSJ has printed one of the best “fooled by randomness” pieces I’ve seen in quite a while, titled “The Triumph of the Random.” This one uses streaks in sports as a central metaphor, with DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak as exhibit A. It presents an immediate disclaimer:
Recent academic studies have questioned whether DiMaggio’s streak is unambiguous evidence of a spurt of ability that exceeded his everyday talent, rather than an anomaly to be expected from some highly talented player, in some year, by chance, something like the occasional 150-yard drive in golf that culminates in a hole in one. No one is saying that talent doesn’t matter. They are just asking whether a similar streak would have happened sometime in the history of baseball even if each player hit with the unheroic and unmiraculous—but steady—ability of an emotionless robot.
The lengthy article then deals with the mathematics of streaks, demonstrating that they are far more probable than we would otherwise think:
A few years ago Bill Miller of the Legg Mason Value Trust Fund was the most celebrated fund manager on Wall Street because his fund outperformed the broad market for 15 years straight. It was a feat compared regularly to DiMaggio’s, but if all the comparable fund managers over the past 40 years had been doing nothing but flipping coins, the chances are 75% that one of them would have matched or exceeded Mr. Miller’s streak.
Next, it moves to psychology and describes the way in which humans seek patterns in randomness as a grounding mechanism with a nice segway by way of my favorites, Kahneman and Tversky, who authored a seminal paper on hot hands in basketball:
If a person tossing a coin weighted to land on heads 80% of the time produces a streak of 10 heads in a row, few people would see that as a sign of increased skill. Yet when an 80% free throw shooter in the NBA has that level of success people have a hard time accepting that it isn’t. The Cognitive Psychology paper, and the many that followed, showed that despite appearances, the “hot hand” is a mirage. Such hot and cold streaks are identical to those you would obtain from a properly weighted coin.
Finally, it deals with the perception of random events:
Why do people have a hard time accepting the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? One reason is that we expect the outcomes of a process to reflect the underlying qualities of the process itself. For example, if an initiative has a 60% chance of success, we expect that six out of every 10 times such an initiative is undertaken, it will succeed. That, however, is false.
A critical conclusion is laid out:
We find false meaning in the patterns of randomness for good reason: we are animals built to do just that… Many studies illustrate how this basic aspect of human nature translates to a misperception of chance.
Truly an excellent read and I can’t recommend it more.