Category: Sports
Please explain this new white rock to me, #Mars, #SmallSteps
The link is here, and for the pointer I thank Gordon. At least it’s not a watch.
Tennis quant betting
For someone who says he bets millions of dollars on tennis a year, sports gambler Elihu Feustel doesn’t watch many matches.
“Which one is Granollers?” Feustel says, referring to Marcel Granollers, a Spaniard ranked 35th in the world. “Is he the one that’s good on clay courts?”
Feustel, from South Bend, Indiana, says he doesn’t need to pay attention to who the players on the men’s ATP World Tour are to double his money. He relies on an algorithm he created using data from 260,000 matches to make about 30 bets a day on Grand Slams such as the Australian Open, which started Jan. 13.
Gamblers and investment funds are increasingly vying for profits from tennis by using computer models to win money from more casual bettors, according to Scott Ferguson, a former Betfair Group Plc (BET) education officer. Such quantitative analysts, or so-called quants, are focusing on tennis in the same way their counterparts are employed by hedge funds to predict moves for stocks, bonds and other assets.
Betfair, a London-based company that enables bettors to wager against each other online, matched almost 50 million pounds ($82 million) of bets on the 2012 final in which Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal. Djokovic is an 8-11 favorite to win a fourth straight title in Melbourne with U.K. bookmaker William Hill Plc, meaning a successful $11 wager would return $8 plus the original stake.
Granollers prefers clay courts, according to his men’s tour profile, and lost his first-round match with Marin Cilic of Croatia in five sets on the second day of play on the hard courts of this year’s Australian Open.
…Tennis is an “attractive” sport to create an algorithm for because there are only two players in a singles match and statistics are freely available, according to William Knottenbelt, an associate professor of computing at London’s Imperial College. He co-wrote a tennis algorithm that he says would have made a 3.8 percent return on bets on 2,173 ATP matches in 2011.
Feustel, who says he puts in a 60-hour week checking and improving his model, works with a computer programmer and trader. The programmer trawls the Internet for data such as serve speed and break-point conversions. That’s plugged into the model which comes up with “fair” betting prices for scheduled games.
If those odds diverge from market prices, Feustel says, his trader — who lives outside the U.S. — will gamble as much as the market will allow at bookmakers including Pinnacle Sports, based on the Caribbean island of Curacao. That can be about $30,000 on a match result in later tournament rounds.
There is more here, and for the pointer I thank Hugo Lindgren, who is joining Hollywood Reporter as acting editor.
Might this be another “doubly stupid” economic policy?
The first part is this:
Thousands of disgruntled horse and pony riders rode through the French capital to complain about tax increases they say will put many of them out of business and send 80,000 animals to the abattoir.
The “cavaliers” blocked roads from the symbolic Paris squares, Place d’Italie, Place de la Bastille and Place de la Nation, in protest at government plans to almost treble VAT on equestrian centres.
The response of the government is this:
France has about 700,000 horse-riding instructors and 2.3 million people who ride, 82% of them women. It is the third most popular sport in France.
The government has promised subsidies to prevent riding schools from going under…
The article is here, and I thank Phil Steinmeyer for the pointer. Here is a previous example of a multiply stupid policy, strange how they both involve horses…
The cheerleader effect
Whether you’re a casual user of social media sites like facebook and twitter or an avid online dater accessing eHarmony or Match.com, chances are you’ve created a personal online profile and been faced with a decision: What should you post for your profile picture? Many people post head shots or selfies, while others opt for pictures of their children, spouses, pets, or even favorite quotes or symbols. If your goal is to be perceived as attractive (and let’s be honest, whose isn’t?), then new research by Drew Walker and Edward Vul at the University of California, San Diego suggests your best bet is to opt for a group shot with friends.
A photo with friends conveys the fact that you are amiable and well-liked, but oddly enough that is not what makes you more appealing. Instead, the new research shows that individual faces appear more attractive when presented in a group than when presented alone — a perceptually driven phenomenon known as the cheerleader effect.
And why does this work?:
Walker and Vul posit that the cheerleader effect arises from the interplay of three different visuo-cognitive processes. First, whenever we view a set of objects like an array of dots or a group of faces, our visual system automatically computes general information about the entire set, including average size of group members, theiraverage location, and even the average emotional expression on faces. Thus although the group contains many individual items, we naturally perceive those items as a set, and form our impressions on the basis of the collective whole.
In addition, the impression that we have of the group as a whole influences our perception of any one individual item. We tend to view individual members as being more like the group than they actually are. Thus when we see a face in a crowd, we tend to perceive that face as similar to the average of all the faces in that crowd.
As it turns out, we find average faces very attractive. Composite faces, which are generated by averaging individual faces together, are rated as significantly more attractive than the individual faces used to create them. According to Walker and Vul, if presenting a face in a group causes us to perceive that face as more similar to the average, we are likely to find that face more attractive.
In one experiment, the researchers found that a group of four was large enough to create that effect. Does this have implications for rock and roll?
That is from Cindi May, via Gareth Cook.
IBM’s Watson will be made available in a more powerful form on the internet
Companies, academics and individual software developers will be able to use it at a small fraction of the previous cost, drawing on IBM’s specialists in fields like computational linguistics to build machines that can interpret complex data and better interact with humans.
That is a big deal, obviously. The story is here.
When will pitch-tracking technology displace baseball umpires?
This is a fascinating article by Ben Lindbergh, and it does not require interest in baseball, here is one bit:
“The goal, of course, is no error, or as close to that ideal as we can possibly come. And so the best solution might be a hybrid approach that combines tradition with technology. Not robot umps, but regular umps with input from robot brains.”
Here is another good bit of many:
Over time, players have internalized some of the idiosyncrasies of the strike zone as it’s currently called. The zone called against left-handed hitters is shifted a couple inches away relative to righties. The size of the zone fluctuates depending on the count — expanding dramatically on 3-0 and shrinking severely on 0-2 — and according to the base-out state, velocity of the pitch, and many other factors. Yes, these are all arguments in support of standardizing the strike zone, assuming you like to see pitches called according to code. They’re also reasons to exercise caution. “Because it’s always worked this way” isn’t a good reason not to do something different, but it is a reason to think through the possible ramifications before making a major change that could upset the delicate batter-pitcher balance. Players will adjust to whatever the zone looks like, but it’s in baseball’s best interests to make those adjustments smooth.
McKean cautions that instituting an automatic zone “would ruin the game,” which makes him the latest in a long line of thus-far-incorrect critics who’ve warned that something would be the end of baseball. “If you told the pitchers to try and throw that ball with an automatic strike zone, which means it has to hit some part of that plate or be in some part of that strike zone, heck, the games would go on for five, six hours,” he says. My guess is that he has the direction of the effect right, but the magnitude wrong. Automating the strike zone would probably make it slightly smaller, on the whole, and more predictable for the hitter. That could increase scoring and perhaps lead to longer games, but not to such an extent that the sport would be broken.
However, standardizing the zone would remove a level of interplay between batter, pitcher, catcher, and umpire that many fans find compelling.
Interesting throughout, and for the pointer I thank Hamp Nettles.
NBA predictions time
It’s that time of year. Against the conventional wisdom, I’m going to opt for the Brooklyn Nets. They have an excellent front line, a very good starting five, and a deep bench. Garnett and Pierce still have something to prove, although my hypothesis does require an attitude upgrade from Deron Williams. They are more like some of the old Pistons teams than a “single best player team.” A healthy Miami Heat is a stronger contender but Wade is already being rested for back-to-back games, which does not augur well for a long playoff run. Chicago needs a more creative offense and Indiana doesn’t seem quite ready to win a title, though they may knock off Miami in a playoff series.
The most overrated team is the Los Angeles Clippers (Griffin is more a spectacular player than a great player and Chris Paul is bad for team morale). So who will win the West? When in doubt, and when it seems no one deserves to win, ask these two questions: a) does the team have world-class defense? b) which is the team with the single best player? That leaves you with San Antonio and Oklahoma as the two units with the best chances. Each seems too weakened to take home an entire title.
By the way, here is a new study of where NBA players come from, note this: “Growing up in a wealthier neighborhood is a major, positive predictor of reaching the N.B.A. for both black and white men.”
Will the sports sector ever be disrupted?
Here is a question from a recent symposium:
People spend 4 hours per week watching sports and 40 listening to music. But the music industry is one sixth the size of the sports industry. Why?
No time-shifting for live contests, much less piracy, less substitutability (there is only one Super Bowl), and greater indivisibility of product would be the beginnings of an answer. The source is here, hat tip goes to Ted Gioia.
The growing move to measure everything, including basketball
This time it is from the NBA:
The league on Thursday announced plans to install sophisticated tracking cameras, known as the SportVu system, in every arena for the coming season, creating an unprecedented treasure trove of data about virtually every wrinkle of the game. SportVu, developed by Stats LLC, records data points for all 10 players, the three referees and the ball, every 30th of a second, measuring speed, distance, player separation and ball possession. Every step, every dribble, every pass, every shot, every rebound — really, every movement — will be recorded, coded and categorized. … The N.B.A. is the first major professional sports league in the United States to fully adopt the SportVu system. It will have other implications for the league, far beyond the playbook and the box score. Not everyone might welcome the change. General managers will surely exploit the more sophisticated statistics when negotiating contracts with player agents. Not all assists, points and rebounds are created equal — and teams will soon be able to demonstrate that vividly. Referees are also tracked by SportVu, which means the league will have yet another tool to analyze every call, non-call and missed call as it ranks its officials. Those rankings help determine which referees are chosen for playoff assignments and the finals.
There is yet further information here. One prediction is simply that players will pass the ball more, even when it does not result in an assist. Team defense will improve too. Furthermore some injuries may be partially forecastable and thus preventable. If applied at the college level, the efficiency of the draft will improve and this will help restore competitive parity. Truly injured or otherwise disadvantaged players may lose some insurance value, since it may be clear earlier on they are not going to recover or improve.
Singaporean hawkers are some of the best food creators in the world
From a recent cook-off challenge:
Singapore’s humble but beloved hawkers have triumphed 2-1 in a cook-off with the legendary Gordon Ramsay who runs restaurants that have earned not just one but three Michelin stars. Are our hawkers then worthy of Michelin star attention? Well, they may not be decorated, but it looks like they still win the hearts of locals.
Nearly 5,000 people thronged the Singtel Hawker Heroes Challenge to see the Ramsay, the Hell’s Kitchen star, pit his skills against three hawkers who were chosen in a national poll drawing 2.5 million votes. The chef only had two days to learn and prepare the same hawker food that these local masters have been doing for decades.
There is more detail here, additional coverage here, and it is no surprise Ramsey fell flat on the laksa.
There is, by the way, plenty of talk that the hawkers are an endangered species. With rising rents, various bureaucracies are asking whether the hawker centers really deserve so much dedicated land in the city plans. There’s also a question whether the younger generation wants to take on jobs which are so stressful and demanding, when so many other good jobs are available in Singapore. Other hawker centers are suffering in quality just a wee bit from the gentrification of their neighborhoods. Let’s hope for the best but I fear for the worst.
My Singapore food recommendation, by the way, is the Ghim Moh Market and Food Centre, which has numerous gems and is one of those “pre-upgrade” hawker centers, with a design dating from 1977. (Unfortunately they will close it for renovation next year, which will probably mean the loss of some hawkers.) My favorite dish was the dosa at Heaven’s Indian Curry, arguably the best I have had, including in South India. They open at six a.m. each morning, every single day, see my remarks above. Their dishes cost either one dollar or two dollars (roughly, actually less).
The future of higher education in Alabama?
The video that was posted online appeared to be a tour of the spa area at some swanky new hotel.
There were cascading waterfalls into hot and cold pools. There was an arcade section. A smoothie bar. Flat-screen TVs adorned every open space. There were lockers the members at Augusta National would find acceptable.
This was luxury, no doubt. But it was not at a hotel.
Instead, this shaky video tour was of the inside of a college football team’s training and lounge area. Specifically, it is the training, weight room and lounge area within the Mal Moore Athletic Complex on the campus of the University of Alabama.
Pricetag: $9 million. (And that’s just for the upgrades. The original facility, which opened in 2005, cost about $50 million.)
The host school, the University of Alabama, raised tuition seven percent last year.
There is now a for-profit university entering NCAA Division I ranks
…Mueller’s company, Grand Canyon University, in Phoenix, is in the process of becoming the first-ever for-profit university to join the NCAA’s Division I ranks. The Antelopes (hence, the ticker symbol) accepted an invitation to the WAC last December when the oft-raided league was on life support. On July 1 they became official members, beginning a four-year transition period from Division II to Division I
The presidents of the Pac-12 — including one in particular — are none too pleased about it.
The conference’s 12 presidents signed and delivered a letter dated July 10 urging the NCAA’s Executive Committee to “engage in further, careful consideration” about allowing for-profit universities to become Division I members at the committee’s August meeting. In the meantime, Pac-12 presidents decided at a league meeting last month not to schedule future contests against Grand Canyon while the issue is under consideration.
“A university using intercollegiate athletics to drive up its stock value — that’s not what we’re about,” Arizona State president Michael Crow said in a phone interview over the weekend. “… If someone asked me, should we play the Pepsi-Cola Company in basketball? The answer is no. We shouldn’t be playing for-profit corporations.”
There is more information here, and the hat tip goes to Tim Johnson on Twitter.
*The Great Tamasha*
The author is James Astill and the subtitle is Cricket, Corruption, and the Spectacular Rise of Modern India. This is an excellent book on India even if you, like I, have no real understanding of cricket. Here are a few bits:
According to an analysis by Richard Cashman of the 143 Indians who played Test cricket up to 1979, half had a college degree, compared to 1 or 2 per cent of Indians as a whole.
And:
Cricket is now ubiquitous on Indian television. It is shown constantly on 16 sports channels and relentlessly discussed on over 100 news channels.
And quoting Ashis Nandy:
“Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English.”
Recommended.
John Rawls was a Platonist on baseball
On most Saturdays, the shy, private Rawls would spend hours typing letters recalling past events in astounding detail. One such letter, republished by Boston Review, recalled a conversation he had some twenty years earlier—you probably had conversations with sentient beings today who have lived shorter than that—about why baseball is the best sport. In the letter, Rawls credits his interlocutor, Harry Kalven, for coming up with six reasons why baseball is “the best of all games.”
That is from Aaron Gordon (via BookForum), who also dissects the fallacies of Rawls on baseball.
Who are the three highest paid officials on the Pentagon budget?
The football coaches at Army, Navy and Air Force.
Here is more (mostly on other topics), hat tip to @jtlevy. Here are some comparable answers for state government employees.