4 ms·

Wouldn't it be more noteworthy if we weren't able to find one analyst who predicted Lin? With the number of amateur analysts, and the number of players, you'd

Wouldn't it be more noteworthy if we weren't able to find one analyst who predicted Lin? With the number of amateur analysts, and the number of players, you'd think that its likely there's a web page somewhere plugging every prospect.

corin_ 15y ago
Reminds me of that classic scam of sending out sports (or anything else) predictions to a huge mailing list, and basically AB testing in such a way that after a little time there are at least x% who think your success rate is incredible.
- ShabbyDoo 15y ago
  Yeah. Done historically by stockbrokers making cold calls. Every week, "Now, don't put your money with me just yet. Here's what I'm putting my clients into this week. Just watch Stock XYZ this week to see what happens." If you pick three highly volatile stocks every week, make a lot of calls, and drop the prospects to whom you have given "bad" advice, you'll end-up with a decent sized set of potential clients who think you are a god.
- jimmybot 15y ago
  How is this anywhere the same? In a scam, you don't have any way of making any future correct predictions--it's just random. This analyst has a reasoned system that can be tested against past players and against future prospects. Sure, there's going to be someone out there that picks Jeremy Lin. But the trick is, can you correctly identify players who are already known to be good based on their college stats, make the right call on Jeremy Lin, and go forward and continue to make good calls on draft prospects? I'm not saying this sabermetrician generally makes good calls; I haven't looked. But dismissing his call as the result of a series of Bernoulli trials is completely missing the point.
  - Retric 15y ago
    His point is the number of people making predictions is high enough that it raises the bar for people to stand out from the pack. Basically run an ANOVA test on 10 groups vs 10,000 groups and it takes a larger divination to stand out from the pack. PS: It does not matter if there is a system behind their predictions, what matters is how well their predictions hold up over time. Otherwise your just: http://xkcd.com/904/ http://xkcd.com/904/
    - mrobataille 15y ago
      That's my favorite xkcd - so simple, and true. Ironic side note - I tried to use it as my ESPN.com forum account avatar, and was denied.
  - corin_ 15y ago
    In the scam one person is making loads of predictions knowing that some will pay off. In this story, lots of people are making predictions and again, the chances are some of them will be right. Read the comment I replied to, his point was exactly the same as the scam's logic, which is basically that if enough monkeys spend enough time with typewriters... etc.
    - jimmybot 15y ago
      There's a very important difference that you're missing. In the scam you're applying you're random machine over all possible results. In the sabermetrician example, the random machine is being applied across methodologies of picking prospects, ie bunch of different "moneyball" hobbyists trying out different stats and weights to rank players. The end result is the possibility of the discovery of a very good methodology that has found stats that traditionally are not important.
      - corin_ 15y ago
        But it takes more than one result to tell whether the methodology is good or if it was just lucky - otherwise it's just a guy tossing a coin once and saying "see, I predicted heads!"
        jimmybot 15y ago
        Agreed. And you can't even do that test with a scam, which was my point.
marknutter 15y ago
That doesn't really detract from the accomplishment. The numbers don't lie. To me it's clear that despite Lin's strong numbers, he wasn't given a chance until now because he didn't fit the archetypal NBA player mold.
lubujackson 15y ago
I'd say the impressive thing is the analyst found some figures that seemed to have a high correlation to success, and Lin has panned out pretty close to how he described him. And remember, this is a player who wasn't even drafted, it'd be like finding an analyst tell you Tom Brady has a chance to be a top 5 QB before he was drafted in the 6th round after being a partial backup at Michigan, and backing it up with convincing data.

corin_ 15y ago

Reminds me of that classic scam of sending out sports (or anything else) predictions to a huge mailing list, and basically AB testing in such a way that after a little time there are at least x% who think your success rate is incredible.

ShabbyDoo 15y ago
Yeah. Done historically by stockbrokers making cold calls. Every week, "Now, don't put your money with me just yet. Here's what I'm putting my clients into this week. Just watch Stock XYZ this week to see what happens." If you pick three highly volatile stocks every week, make a lot of calls, and drop the prospects to whom you have given "bad" advice, you'll end-up with a decent sized set of potential clients who think you are a god.
jimmybot 15y ago
How is this anywhere the same? In a scam, you don't have any way of making any future correct predictions--it's just random. This analyst has a reasoned system that can be tested against past players and against future prospects. Sure, there's going to be someone out there that picks Jeremy Lin. But the trick is, can you correctly identify players who are already known to be good based on their college stats, make the right call on Jeremy Lin, and go forward and continue to make good calls on draft prospects? I'm not saying this sabermetrician generally makes good calls; I haven't looked. But dismissing his call as the result of a series of Bernoulli trials is completely missing the point.
- Retric 15y ago
  His point is the number of people making predictions is high enough that it raises the bar for people to stand out from the pack. Basically run an ANOVA test on 10 groups vs 10,000 groups and it takes a larger divination to stand out from the pack. PS: It does not matter if there is a system behind their predictions, what matters is how well their predictions hold up over time. Otherwise your just: http://xkcd.com/904/ http://xkcd.com/904/
  - mrobataille 15y ago
    That's my favorite xkcd - so simple, and true. Ironic side note - I tried to use it as my ESPN.com forum account avatar, and was denied.
- corin_ 15y ago
  In the scam one person is making loads of predictions knowing that some will pay off. In this story, lots of people are making predictions and again, the chances are some of them will be right. Read the comment I replied to, his point was exactly the same as the scam's logic, which is basically that if enough monkeys spend enough time with typewriters... etc.
  - jimmybot 15y ago
    There's a very important difference that you're missing. In the scam you're applying you're random machine over all possible results. In the sabermetrician example, the random machine is being applied across methodologies of picking prospects, ie bunch of different "moneyball" hobbyists trying out different stats and weights to rank players. The end result is the possibility of the discovery of a very good methodology that has found stats that traditionally are not important.
    - corin_ 15y ago
      But it takes more than one result to tell whether the methodology is good or if it was just lucky - otherwise it's just a guy tossing a coin once and saying "see, I predicted heads!"
      - jimmybot 15y ago
        Agreed. And you can't even do that test with a scam, which was my point.

marknutter 15y ago

That doesn't really detract from the accomplishment. The numbers don't lie. To me it's clear that despite Lin's strong numbers, he wasn't given a chance until now because he didn't fit the archetypal NBA player mold.

lubujackson 15y ago

I'd say the impressive thing is the analyst found some figures that seemed to have a high correlation to success, and Lin has panned out pretty close to how he described him. And remember, this is a player who wasn't even drafted, it'd be like finding an analyst tell you Tom Brady has a chance to be a top 5 QB before he was drafted in the 6th round after being a partial backup at Michigan, and backing it up with convincing data.