One of my biggest peeves with sports fans are their complete disregard for the difficulty of being a ref or an umpire in professional sports. They have an extremely hard task that demands perfection and they very nearly get it all the time. Playoff refs are actually chosen based on their number of mistakes during the regular season (for NBA and the NFL, at least. I assume it's the same for other sports). There is a relentless review of their work after every game and each referee is criticized and trained throughout their careers to become better.
They could get 99% of their calls right, and yet they still get lambasted when they make one wrong call.
A great passage I read from Peter Post summed up my feeling towards the matter well. Paraphrased, it was something along the lines of, "Never blame the ref for one bad call that costs you the game. Chances are your team made at least one mistake along the way, so you should instead lament all your missed opportunities that would have won it for you."
At any rate, here's a fantastic article from ESPN where the writer spends a day hanging out with NBA referees at work and has some very interesting and insightful comments.
Friday, July 29, 2011
[RANDOM] Monty Hall Problem
The "Monty Hall" problem is a famous probability question that stumped me when I heard it. Even though I guessed it was a trick question, I couldn't mathematically prove why either solution was correct, which I would consider as getting the question false (I don't think blind guesses should count for anything).
If you've never heard it, it's a fun one to puzzle through. I'll put the problem description below and a link to the Wikipedia page with the solution afterwards.
"Suppose you're on a game show and you're given the choice of three doors [and will win what is behind the chosen door]. Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats [unwanted booby prizes]. The car and the goats were placed randomly behind the doors before the show. The rules of the game show are as follows: After you have chosen a door, the door remains closed for the time being. The game show host, Monty Hall, who knows what is behind the doors, now has to open one of the two remaining doors, and the door he opens must have a goat behind it. If both remaining doors have goats behind them, he chooses one [uniformly] at random. After Monty Hall opens a door with a goat, he will ask you to decide whether you want to stay with your first choice or to switch to the last remaining door. Imagine that you chose Door 1 and the host opens Door 3, which has a goat. He then asks you "Do you want to switch to Door Number 2?" Is it to your advantage to change your choice?"
-Krauss and Wang 2003:10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem#Extended_problem_description
If you've never heard it, it's a fun one to puzzle through. I'll put the problem description below and a link to the Wikipedia page with the solution afterwards.
"Suppose you're on a game show and you're given the choice of three doors [and will win what is behind the chosen door]. Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats [unwanted booby prizes]. The car and the goats were placed randomly behind the doors before the show. The rules of the game show are as follows: After you have chosen a door, the door remains closed for the time being. The game show host, Monty Hall, who knows what is behind the doors, now has to open one of the two remaining doors, and the door he opens must have a goat behind it. If both remaining doors have goats behind them, he chooses one [uniformly] at random. After Monty Hall opens a door with a goat, he will ask you to decide whether you want to stay with your first choice or to switch to the last remaining door. Imagine that you chose Door 1 and the host opens Door 3, which has a goat. He then asks you "Do you want to switch to Door Number 2?" Is it to your advantage to change your choice?"
-Krauss and Wang 2003:10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem#Extended_problem_description
[RANDOM] Google data online
Sorry about the six month absence of new posts onto this blog. It's been more a lack of energy than a lack of motivation or ideas that's been preventing anything from going up. I actually have a ton of content that I've been wanting to post about for a while now, and hopefully I'll make some progress on that in the next few weeks.
For starters, I never cease to be amazed at the great work Google does at putting up information online. I stumbled on this a while ago and was impressed at how easily they put data into the public arena and how accessible it is. I'm the type of person who likes to debate and talk about varied subjects, and I think that backing up your arguments with proof is important. That previous link is to GDP of countries in the world, but you can access all sorts of nifty statistics here. It's worth exploring if you're into demographic data like this and I'm sure it'll be useful in the future in more serious research as well when awareness grows.
Just to scare you, check out this chart on the rise of chlamydia in the US.
For starters, I never cease to be amazed at the great work Google does at putting up information online. I stumbled on this a while ago and was impressed at how easily they put data into the public arena and how accessible it is. I'm the type of person who likes to debate and talk about varied subjects, and I think that backing up your arguments with proof is important. That previous link is to GDP of countries in the world, but you can access all sorts of nifty statistics here. It's worth exploring if you're into demographic data like this and I'm sure it'll be useful in the future in more serious research as well when awareness grows.
Just to scare you, check out this chart on the rise of chlamydia in the US.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
