Comments on: Understanding Randomness: The Drunkard’s Walk

By: Alex Remington

Alex Remington — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:35:42 +0000

This book really is wonderful. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

By: AC

AC — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:37:46 +0000

freakin’ Leyritz

By: Marc Schneider

Marc Schneider — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:08:59 +0000

No doubt that a lot of randomness exists, not just in baseball but in life. People don’t like to accept it, but many things that determine the course of our lives are not in our control. And, really, every baseball game is random in some way–when a pitcher hangs a curve, whether a ground ball finds a hole, etc. Many things are just random.

But I object when seemingly everything that happens is considered as random. Jeff Francouer and the Braves are good examples. Rob Neyer spent much of the season talking about how Francouer was just unlucky and that he would eventually rebound. Well, he didn’t and one reason is, I believe, that his performance (or lack thereof actually) was more than just random unluckiness. Anyone that actually watches this guy hit realizes he has serious problems that affect his performance; it’s not just random.

With the Braves generally, I have trouble attributing their poor record in one-run games simply to bad luck. The luck or randomness was that many of the games they lost were one-run games. But it wasn’t luck that they continually did things that caused them to lose.

Another thing is that, while it may be accurate to attribute problems in life or baseball to randomness or bad luck, that attitude can have pernicious consequences. Everyone knows that some people have an easier road and that good or bad things often happen for no particular reason. It certainly makes sense to recognize those things that are random. But you can carry this attitude too far so that it becomes fatalism–a willingness to simply accept your seeming fate rather than trying to change it.

By: uncle ran

uncle ran — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:09:28 +0000

”even a blind hog can find an acorn every now and then”.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:47:28 +0000

For any interested readers, I’d also recommend Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

By: Rick

Rick — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:29:53 +0000

Sometimes I hate that I am a semi-educated baseball fan. Whenever I watch a game on TV, my wife always asks me why I’m calling some announcer or PbP man an idiot. At this point, it’s a purely rhetorical question. Her eyes glaze over when I start telling her.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:21:04 +0000

Baseball gives many different things to many different people, and one of the gifts of the last 15 years has been the gift of statistical randomness to the casual fan of them. Ever since its inception, perception of baseball has been controlled by writers, who understand everything as a narrative. It was not until people like Bill James that fans started to understand that you can appreciate baseball in a non-narrative perspective.

When Moneyball came out, many falsely believed it was a book about on base percentage and drafting college players. It was a book about many things, but the one which resonated with me and many of my like minded friends was the breaking of the narrative view of baseball. No longer was I chained to the idea that every thing, every win, every out, must have some cause we can understand. I could appreciate the sheet randomness and chance which dictates more of the game than the traditional writer can even understand, much less appreciate and communicate.

Alas, there are no broadcasters that I know who share this appreciation, and very few sportswriters. Therefore I generally tune them out and forget about the whole cause and effect routine they have. I hope someday, maybe in another 10 or 15 years, there will be a new breed of analyst who can appreciate the game in ways that I can, but for now I’ve given up trying.