The Monty Hall Problem is a counter-intuitive statistical puzzle stemming from one of the situations presented to contestants on Let’s Make a Deal. I was first exposed to the problem in an introductory Bayesian statistics course. Many months ago, I wrote code to simulating the...
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A Second Canadian gets Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame
The 2020 National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees were announced yesterday. Derek Jeter fell one vote shy of becoming the second player to be voted in unanimously and Larry Walker became the second Canadian-born player to earn a spot in Cooperstown. Jeter’s first-ballot election was...
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The Rapid Collapse of Carl Crawford's Career
As the end of the decade approaches, recap and best-of articles abound. One such article that stuck out to me was a review of the decisions that shaped the Boston Red Sox over the last decade. The 2010s were a successful decade for the franchise....
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An Extra-Flighty Ball Lifted More Batters
Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire’s home run chase in 1998 is often credited with bringing fans back to major league baseball after the 1994 strike. Cy Young award winners were not thrilled, but fans loved it. These guys (and many others) were launching and the...
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Another MLB team in Florida? For whom?
Last Wednesday it was reported that the co-owner of the Orlando Magic, Pat Williams, has dreams of bringing a major league baseball team to Orlando. Williams even came prepared with a photoshopped Little League logo for his Dreamers. Rich people are going to do rich...
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Reviewing My 2019 Predictions
Baseball, like much of the rest of society, seems to be in a bad spot right now. Just look at this list of ongoing issues:
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The Probable (Hopeful!) End of a Red Sox Fun Fact
The Red Sox have started the season poorly. Their sloppy, pressing play has resulted in a 5-10 record (-29 run differential). It is only 15 games, but that record is ominous. No Red Sox team has ever made the playoffs after posting a sub-.500 record...
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Predicting the 2019 Season
I am late to post my annual picks and predictions this year. Most teams have already played 4 games. The Orioles took two of three from the Yankees! The Red Sox’s starters looked hapless in Seattle. The new look Phillies swept the Braves. Interesting stuff...
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Playing with Data from The Masters
I posted a new Shiny app to the Apps page that allows you to play with data from The Masters golf tournament. You can interact with a plot of yearly tournament results, explore each year’s final leaderboad, sort through historical performance leaderboards, see who are...
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Another Round of Hall of Fame Voting
The 2019 National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees were announced last week. Mariano Rivera, Mike Mussina, Roy Halladay, and Edgar Martinez have each been assigned a permanent residency in Cooperstown. This is an excellent class. All four players are absolutely Hall of Famers. But there...
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