1 / 80

The Order of Everything

The Order of Everything . If A is better than B and B is better than C, then A must be better than C, right?. STOP THINKING LIKE A MATHEMATICIAN.

chana
Download Presentation

The Order of Everything

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Order of Everything If A is better than B and B is better than C, then A must be better than C, right?

  2. STOP THINKING LIKE A MATHEMATICIAN • This year in College Football, LSU beat Alabama and Alabama beat LSU, so Alabama must be better than Alabama. Huh? The rules of mathematics apply to certain closed well-defined systems. Real life, with its reluctance to follow rules, no matter how well-defined, is messier.

  3. Beginnings Every morning at 5:30 AM I hear this sound.

  4. WHY? • Dear Lord, why? It’s not like I have to milk the cows. • My first class is a 8:35 (or 8:38 or 8:39), and I don’t live 150 miles from work. So why this compulsion? Because these guys won’t quit

  5. Every night all of these basketball games take place, at both the pro and college level, and these games absolutely, positively must be logged, analyzed and assessed. Why must they? It’s called Obsessive Compulsive Behavior, my friends, and it MUST BE FED. • So, who is this dave?

  6. Who is dave?

  7. Who is Dave? • Cartoon images

  8. Where it started • Bernard Eugene Vinson, 1929 – 1992 • The greatest guy of all time

  9. Four methods • Accumulation • Spelling Bee • Pete Palmer zero-sum • Iterative pairwise-comparison method

  10. Simple Accumulation of Points • Objects acquire points as a result of repetition of “trials”; the highest number of scores is recorded. • Ex: In my college bowling class, we were allowed to bowl as many games as we were willing to pay for (at that time I think it was 30 cents/game in the UTK bowling center.) Your score was the total of your ten best games.

  11. My Most Precious List is Accumulative • For going on 8 years, I have been tagging the value of “currently active actors”. In my mind, this generates a “Career Achievement” score. For each actor, and for each of their films, I would assign two numbers. The first is an assessment of the value of the film (0-10); the second is an assessment of that actor’s prominence in that film. These scores are multiplied; the actor’s total score is the best ten of these.

  12. Two problems • Despite having spent 6 years on this, I am working alphabetically, and I have only completed through the letter T • Because the film business is one of the most sexist, and films frequently feature 60 year-old-leading men and their 32-year-old girlfriends, it’s hard for women to sustain a careeras leads like men can.

  13. Actor Career Achievement • 1 De Niro, Robert 920 • 2 Nicholson, Jack 891 • 3 Hoffman, Dustin 890 • 4 Pacino, Al 890 • 5 Eastwood, Clint 870

  14. Actor Career Achievement • 6 Deneuve, Catherine 864 • 7 Hackman, Gene 842 • 8 Duvall, Robert 834 • 9 Ford, Harrison 834 • 10 Christie, Julie 833

  15. Actor Career Achievement • 11 Depp, Johnny 832 • 12 Leung Chiu-Wei, Tony 832 • 13 Depardieu, Gerard 831 • 14 Keitel, Harvey 826 • 15 O'Toole, Peter 824

  16. Actor Career Achievement • 16 Travolta, John 820 • 17 Connery, Sean 813 • 18 DiCaprio, Leonardo 813 • 19 Penn, Sean 813 • 20 Clooney, George 812

  17. Actor Career Achievement • 21 Day-Lewis, Daniel 812 • 22 Martin, Steve 810 • 23 Cage, Nicolas 806 • 24 Dreyfuss, Richard 805 • 25 Bridges, Jeff 802

  18. The Women • 1 Deneuve, Catherine 864 • 2 Christie, Julie 833 • 3 Keaton, Diane 789 • 4 Li, Gong 788 • 5 Spacek, Sissy 788

  19. The Women • 6 Streep, Meryl 786 • 7 Moore, Julianne 780 • 8 Huppert, Isabelle 764 • 9 Kidman, Nicole 764 • 10 Linney, Laura 761

  20. Spelling Bee Variation • The idea is simple. Keep “winning” and you drift upwards. Defeat someone above you and get a bigger jump. Lose to someone worse and take a big jump down (unless the team you lost to was so close that they moved past you.)

  21. Current NBA (through last night’s games) • 26 Milwaukee • 27 Utah • 28 Washington • 29 Charlotte • 30 Toronto

  22. Current NBA (through last night’s games) • 21 Phoenix • 22 New Jersey • 23 New York • 24 Detroit • 25 Atlanta

  23. Current NBA (through last night’s games) • 16 Cleveland • 17 Portland • 18 Sacramento • 19 New Orleans • 20 Golden State

  24. Current NBA (through last night’s games) • 11 LA Clippers • 12 Minnesota • 13 Philadelphia • 14 LA Lakers • 15 Indiana

  25. Current NBA (through last night’s games) • 6 San Antonio • 7 Memphis • 8 Oklahoma City • 9 Boston • 10 Denver

  26. Current NBA (through last night’s games) • 1 Miami • 2 Orlando • 3 Chicago • 4 Dallas • 5 Houston

  27. I want to stress that there is no objective truth in these methods • The objective is to track these metric for long enough that you get a good sense of what seems to produce the results that you find interesting, not the “right” results. (And for those of you who follow Men’s NCAA Basketball, you will see what I mean with the next list.)

  28. NCAA Men’s Basketball, Current Ratings through last night’s games • (Revealing the depths of my sickness) • 591 St. Francis Ill • 592 Toccoa Falls • 593 Trinity Baptist • 594 Avila College • 595 Doane • 596 Northwest • 597 Nebraska-Kearney

  29. NCAA Men’s Basketball, Current Ratings through last night’s games • 26 George Mason • 27 Georgetown • 28 Ohio State • 29 Illinois State • 30 Davidson

  30. NCAA Men’s Basketball, Current Ratings through last night’s games • 21 Duke • 22 Creighton • 23 Missouri • 24 Evansville • 25 Baylor

  31. NCAA Men’s Basketball, Current Ratings through last night’s games • 16 UNLV • 17 St. Mary's • 18 Gonzaga • 19 San Diego State • 20 Wyoming

  32. NCAA Men’s Basketball, Current Ratings through last night’s games • 11 Iowa • 12 Indiana • 13 Murray State • 14 Washington • 15 Arizona

  33. NCAA Men’s Basketball, Current Ratings through last night’s games • 6 Oral Roberts • 7 Michigan State • 8 Michigan • 9 Idaho • 10 New Mexico State

  34. NCAA Men’s Basketball, Current Ratings through last night’s games • 1 Colorado State • 2 New Mexico • 3 Kansas • 4 Syracuse • 5 Wichita State

  35. I am not so interested in whether the informal methods are “right” as I am whether they are “learning”. What’s this? The horizontal represents the passage of time, the vertical is misses per day for the current NBA season. Next is the same graph with a trendline Added.

  36. So the system’s number of misses per day is dropping. This can be seen even more clearly on the next graph. On each day, where the number of misses over the previous week is recalculated each day.

  37. And finally, the same graph with a trendline.

  38. So, at the start of the season, this system was missing on about 25 games per week, but now it’s only missing on about 18. So it’s learning, which Makes it interesting enough for me to continue tracking it.

  39. Pete Palmer Zero-Sum method (not the official title, but it’s how I learned it • Question: Is 35% success rate better than a 30% success rate? • A: Not necesarily

  40. Example: Batting averages • The batting average for the entire National League is typically about .270. As a percentage it indicates that a batter gets a base hit 27% of the time that he registers an official at bat. • Now say Doug hits .350 (7 for 20), Jerry hits .300 (60 for 200). Many argue that we should focus not on the average, but on the difference between expected hits and actual hits.

  41. Now, Doug has 20 at bats. The average player hits .270, so that if Doug had average performance, we would expect him to have 20 * .27 = 5.4 hits. But he actually has 7 hits, so he is 1.6 hits better than the average player. Jerry has 100 at bats. The average player with 100 at bats should have 100 * .270 = 27 hits. But Jerry has 30 hits, so he is 3 hits above average. Lower BA, but lifts his team above average by a slight margin.

  42. Here’s another way to look at this. Doug is currently 7 for 20. In order for him to reach Jerry’s level of achievement, 30 for 100, he must get 23 hits in his next 80 bats. But 23 for 80 produces a batting average of 23/80 = .2875. So in order for Doug to “reach” Jerry, he must maintain a pace that is above average. This means Jerry’s performance to date is better.

  43. Now we will apply this method in a couple of settings. • Best film directors of the last decade. • 12) Paul Greengrass • Highlights: Bloody Sunday, United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum

  44. 11) David Fincher • Highlights: Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network

  45. 10) Tim Burton • Highlights: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice in Wonderland

  46. 9) Pedro Almodovar • Highlights: Talk to Her, Bad Education, Volver

  47. 8) Richard Linkater • Highlights: School of Rock, Before Sunset, A Scanner Darkly

More Related