It's been awhile

So I’m back. I know, it’s been a while, but let me tell you: studying 512 hours for a statistics exam that will be scaled so that no one gets lower than a B takes a lot of time out of your day.

First aside: I think a strong case should be made that my case shows Quant and Econ exams to be something of a false victory for testing understanding of topics at GPPI. My approach to studying allows me (usually) to do ok on exams, but that same approach indicates a remarkable lack of understanding of such concepts as opportunity costs, diminishing returns, increasing marginal costs, statistical outliers, the central limit theorem, and many more. So yes, I may get questions right on the exam, but the fact that I am totally incapable of applying any of those concepts to the real world makes you wonder…(about things other than my own mental health that is)

Anyways, there are many things I’d like to discuss, but the first thing I thought worthy of discussion is this post by the ridiculously prolific Joe Posnanski. Joe asks the question on many minds since the recent release of the Mitchell Report: What if Roger Clemens, and not Barry Bonds, had been the first big star strongly linked with steroids? Joe notes common arguments related to race and each player’s personality (rightly questioning the second argument), but chooses to highlight the relative statistical dominance of each player to explain public reaction. I thought this was a very interesting argument, and one that resonated with me.

Certainly I would argue that the backlash against Barry Bonds is motivated by race and media vendettas, but maybe more than anything else it was a backlash against numbers were simply impossible. People hated the fact that Bonds hit 76 home runs. They hated the fact that he walked more than 200 times in a season. Sure, Clemens had ridiculously good years in a great offensive error, but it’s not like no one’s ever had a sub 2.00 ERA before. It’s not like he won 35 games. I honestly believe that if anyone other than Barry Bonds had been heavily linked with steroids, this would be 1/20 the issue it currently is. Because he is so hated and the records he obliterated so hallowed, people reacted with an anger and sense of self-righteous indignation that has taken on a life of its own.