Category Archives: News

What Do You Do When You’re THAT Much Better Than The Competition?

The Miami Heat have won the last two NBA championships and they’ve been to the finals for the last three years (losing in Game 7 of the finals before winning back-to-back championships). So far this year, they’re one of two teams in the Eastern Conference (as of this writing) to have a winning record. The other team being the Indiana Pacers, whom many think will challenge the Heat for the best team in the Eastern Conference this season. If we take a peek at the Western Conference, we see that there are quite a few more teams with winning records. In fact, there are five times as many winning teams in the West than in the East.

I’m not here to talk about the parity in the NBA conferences, even though it’s clear that there is, but instead, about the Heat and their competition. That is, they’ll play most of their games against the Eastern conference, of which there are only two teams with winning records. Given that the Heat have been an elite team for the last three years, it’s not surprising that a they’d have to resort to “games within games” to stay focused.

After reading that article on SB Nation, I thought to myself how difficult it must be for the Miami Heat coach (Erik Spoelstra) to keep his players focused, not only as each season wears on, but as each game wears on and each quarter wears on. The Heat have played 23 games so far this season and have won 17 of them. While they’re not in first place in the conference (that title belongs to the other winning team in the East, the Pacers), they’re well above the 3rd place team in the conference. For a team that plays that much better than its opponents on a nightly basis, one can see how it might be easy for the players to lose focus. Heck, it’s possible that a few of those six losses came as a result of the team losing focus after having outplayed the other team through the first few quarters of the game.

The reason I’ve raised this issue is because I was thinking about the success of a “games within games” strategy. For instance, let’s say that the “game inside the game” for today’s game is that we’re going to try to get the ball to the guy down low. That is, the strategy is to beat this team by using a certain player in a certain way. I wonder what happens when it gets down to near the end of the game and the score is close — do you abandon that strategy? And if you do, how do you get the players who hadn’t been as involved ready to go now that it’s the key time in the game?

A games within games strategy can be successful, but I worry at what cost.

This also reminds me of one of the chapters in Michael Sandel’s book that we reviewed about 6 months ago — the idea of fines and fees. In particular, the idea that parents pay their kids to read. By doing so, parents are incentivizing a certain behaviour. The worry, from some, is that by paying their kids to read, the kids will no longer derive the same joy out of reading if there’s no incentive involved. If we apply that to this situation, I wonder if the strategy of using the one player in that one game might pervert the incentives for the team. And not just in that game, but over the long haul. Maybe the players don’t then have the same incentives as before when there aren’t games within games.

Of course, I’m not an NBA basketball coach (or even a high school basketball coach), but I think it’s still an idea worth considering.

What Will the Obamas Do in 2017?

Today’s been a bit hectic. I rode the bus from downtown Ottawa to get to the airport. The “hectic-ness” stems from the fact that it was quite snowy outside. The visibility was quite poor and I was sure my flight would be delayed (it wasn’t). Right now, I’m sitting in the Toronto Island Airport (not the much more known Toronto Airport, which is actually almost in Mississauga) and waiting for my next flight.

In amongst my travels today, I had the chance to see Pres. Obama’s speech at Nelson Mandela’s memorial. I knew that it was today, but I also knew I wouldn’t have much time to watch it today. As I was getting ready to board the bus in Ottawa, I saw some folks on Twitter talking about this being one of Obama’s best speeches yet. He’s certainly delivered some doozies in his time, so I wondered if the rhetoric was hyperbole. As it turns out — it’s not. I buffered the speech and watched it at 30,000 feet. It was… awesome. And I don’t mean awesome in the way that the word has been co-opted to mean as a form of slang. The speech was awesome.

There were so many great portions of the speech that I’d be hear all day if I were excerpting. One part in particular I wanted to highlight:

The struggles that follow the victory of formal equality and universal franchise may not be as filled with drama and moral clarity as those that came before, but they are no less important.

Essentially, we’re not finished, yet. We’ve still got work to do. (If you want to watch video of the speech, this is all I could find with airport WiFi.)

Update: as expected, there’s a YouTube video of the speech.

Pres. Obama is the 44th President of the United States, so he belongs to a unique club of people. No doubt, history will remember him. However, he’s also one of the youngest presidents in a time in history where people are living longer than ever. As a result, I’m infinitely curious as to what the Obamas will do post-White House. For instance, look at Bill and Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton went on to be a United States Senator and then the Secretary of the State (and maybe one day, President). Bill (along with Hillary) created a foundation and have been effecting change the world over.

There are probably an infinite number of things that the Obamas could get into, but I wonder which issue excites them the most. That is, where do they want to leave their mark on history. Given the way that Pres. Obama speaks about equality, social justice, and social rights, it seems like a natural fit for him.

Of course, the Obamas probably aren’t thinking about that right now, but that time is not too far away for them. We’re almost finished with 2013 and the 2014 midterm elections aren’t even a year away. After that, it’s essentially “open season” on candidates announcing their intentions to run for President.

The Time I Saw Nelson Mandela and the Earth Quaked

Nelson Mandela at the SkydomeWhen I was in elementary school, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to see Nelson Mandela in person — at the Skydome. It was a very impactful experience for me and it’s one of my shiniest memories. It happened about 15 years ago when Mandela came to launch the Canadian Friends of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. I was in a Kindergarten to Grade 8 elementary school and two students (one male and one female) from each grade were getting the opportunity to go to the event at the Skydome. I don’t quite recall how I got picked, but at the time, I remember thinking that it was pretty cool I was going to get part of the day off from school to go see Nelson Mandela.

Early I said it was one of my shiniest memories and it was an impactful experience. I don’t really remember many of the different events that happened that day, but a few things are quite clear in my mind. On a side note, it seems I wasn’t the only person who doesn’t remember everything from that day. One of the things that I remember clearly is the song or at least one of the songs. After some brief searching, I was able to find it on YouTube. You can hear it in the beginning of this video:

Those singers continuously repeating his name and then when he makes an appearance by way of a golf cart. I remember that. Also, when he made his entrance, I remember this roar overcoming the crowd. I remember that in our section, we were banging our feet on the stands to add to that excitement in the crowd. I’d been to baseball games at the Skydome before, but I didn’t remember ever hearing the crowd become so loud. That whole experience, I remembering being a bit awestruck. I was a bit young to really comprehend everything that was part of what happened to Mandela, but I suppose part of me knew it on a visceral level and that’s what made the event so impactful.

On the topic of crowd loudness, when we got back to school later that day, in the playground, I remember folks asking me if we felt the earthquake. Earthquake, I thought. They continued on by saying that there was an earthquake (!) while we were at the Skydome seeing Nelson Mandela. This, along with that song, are the two things that really stick out in mind about this event. I had thought that the crowd was just “that” loud to Nelson Mandela, but maybe part of our loudness was amplified by some sort of rumble in the Earth.

So, whenever I think about Nelson Mandela, I remember that song and the joy that we all had singing his name. I also remember that the first time I saw Nelson Mandela, the Earth moved.

Cable TV in Trouble? 43% of Young Adults Subscribe to Netflix

I’ve written a few times about TV, but a post from Mashable (with data!) convinced me even more that TV, or at least the viewers of it, are headed elsewhere. Take a look at the graphic below:

Pay close attention to the % of American adults who subscribe to Cable TV and Netflix. In particular, notice the 18-36 age category. For cable TV, 46% of this age group subscribes and for Netflix, 43% of this age group subscribes. The difference is negligible. We can also look at the subscription rates for satellite TV (16%) and then two other online sources: Amazon Prime (17%) and Hulu Plus (8%).

No doubt, some of the folks who subscribe to Cable TV may also subscribe to Netflix and other online sources, but it seems pretty clear where the trend is headed. In fact, if we look back at the Cable TV subscription rates across all age groups, we see a sloping line from the bottom left to the top right. If you’ll notice, there’s a decided decrease in Cable TV subscription rates from the older age groups to the lower age groups. Similarly, there’s the inverse relationship when we look at online places like Netflix and Amazon Prime. There’s a decided increase as you get into the lower age groups.

Could Markets Have Predicted the Civil Rights Movement?

Author’s note: It’s been quite some time since my last post. In fact, it’s the last day of November and this will be my last post this month. It’s been a bit hectic getting settled in Ottawa, in addition to some other things that have been going on, but I do hope to get back into a regular habit of writing posts again.

I came across an article recently that espoused the value of the efficient-market hypothesis through the success of InTrade — when it was still functioning. In case you’re not familiar, InTrade is a betting site that would post contracts, for instance — “Mitt Romney will be the Republican Presidential nominee” — and then people could ‘buy’ that contract if they thought Romney would be the nominee or (sell) that contract if they thought he wouldn’t. There’d be all kinds of questions, not just political. There are questions about world events (the US will find Saddam Hussein) and questions about awards shows (Avatar will win Best Picture).

In the article, there was a small blurb about futarchy:

The potential of prediction markets to aggregate and reveal information is so great that some have surmised they might remake whole political systems. Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, has endorsed what he calls “futarchy,” a form of government that would use prediction markets extensively as a policymaking tool. If the aggregated predictions of the market are better than the individual predictions of a few appointed experts, why not let citizens bet on, rather than submit to professional opinion on, for example, which tax policy is more likely to bring prosperity?

For the most part, there certainly seems to be something to the argument in favour of the wisdom of the crowds, but as I’ve written before, the wisdom of the crowds can’t always be trusted. When thinking about the wisdom of the crowds in the context of policymaking, I wonder about the crowd’s ability to divine the need for civil rights. That is, I wonder if, during the time leading up to the civil rights movement, the crowd would have accurately predicted it was beyond time to implement a new level of equality in the United States. Or, what about in the time of Lincoln? Would the wisdom of the crowds have decided that black people deserved freedom?

How to get your Op-Ed in the New York Times

For as long as I’ve been reading the New York Times, I’ve toyed with the idea of writing an Op-Ed and sending it in. As the Op-Ed’s in the Times that I usually come across are written by people much more well-known than I am, I figured that my chances of getting in were pretty low. As it turns out, this just might not be the case.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across an “Op-Ed” from the Op-Ed and Sunday Review Editor, Trish Hall. In it, she details how to get an Op-Ed in the Times:

We get a flood of submissions, but there’s never too much good writing in the world. There is always room for more. So what makes the cut? That’s what people always ask me, so I’ll try to explain the process. Most pieces we publish are between 400 and 1200 words. They can be longer when they arrive, but not so long that they’re traumatizing. Submissions that are reacting to news of the world are of great value to us, especially if they arrive very quickly. Write in your own voice. If you’re funny, be funny. Don’t write the way you think important people write, or the way you think important pieces should sound. And it’s best to focus very specifically on something; if you write about the general problem of prisons in the United States, the odds are that it will seem too familiar. But if you are a prisoner in California and you have just gone on a hunger strike and you want to tell us about it – now, that we would like to read. We are normal humans (relatively speaking). We like to read conversational English that pulls us along. That means that if an article is written with lots of jargon, we probably won’t like it.

Some of what Trish has said should be comforting to folks who were worried about writing something that was high-brow. She specifically asks that you write in your own voice. So, let’s say that you get something together, submit it to the Times, and it’s accepted. Does your Op-Ed get published just like that? Not exactly:

First, you’ll get a contract giving us the right to publish it and laying out some of your responsibilities. The most important ones have to do with originality and truthfulness. You can’t plagiarize yourself, or someone else, and we won’t run something that has appeared in another publication, either print or digital. We request that you disclose anything that might be seen as a conflict of interest, financial or otherwise: Did you invest in a company that you praise in passing? Did you once work with a public official you mention in flattering or critical terms? Could you or an organization or company you represent benefit from the stance you take in an Op-Ed? We need to know. That doesn’t mean we’ll throw out your article on that basis — in most cases it just means disclosing the relationship to the reader. We also need all of the material that supports the facts in your story. That’s the biggest surprise to some people. Yes, we do fact check. Do we do it perfectly? Of course not. Everyone makes mistakes, and when we do we correct them. But the facts in a piece must be supported and validated. You can have any opinion you would like, but you can’t say that a certain battle began on a certain day if it did not.

It’s really great to see that even the Op-Ed’s are fact-checked. I’ve never worked at a newspaper, so I don’t know if this is standard practice. Either way, it does makes sense that if something’s going to be printed in your publication (The New York Times, no less) that you’d want to make sure it was truthful.

I hope after reading this post, the veil of mystique has been raised on how to get your opinion published in the New York Times. More than that, if you were holding back, I hope you’ll now consider writing an opinion and submitting it.

Revisiting Using Pitchers on Short Rest: Long-Term Ramifications

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Los Angeles Dodgers’ strategy of using their best pitcher (and one of the best pitchers in baseball) on short rest to pitch in a non-elimination game. The Dodgers ended up winning that game and the series, but the debate over the strategy doesn’t end there.

In my post from a couple of weeks ago, I compared the Dodgers’ decision to my younger years when I was playing baseball in double elimination tournaments. This wasn’t a perfect comparison, but I the spirit of the decision to use your best pitcher was there in both. A few nights ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers were eliminated from the postseason. All but one of the thirty teams are eliminated, so this isn’t earth-shattering news. However, the fashion in which they lost is.

In Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers started Clayton Kershaw. Yes, the same one who started in Game 4 for the Dodgers in the National League Divisional Series. This time, Kershaw’s start didn’t go so well. In fact, Kershaw only pitched 4 innings before pulled by the manager, Don Mattingly, but not before Kershaw gave up 7 runs. So, the question might be warranted: did using Kershaw on short rest affect his ability in Game 6? It turns out, this was a thought that had crossed some minds before Kershaw made the start in Game 4.

As they say, hindsight is 20-20, but it does seem a bit prescient. McCarthy’s hypothesis makes sense, but it’d be hard to test. One may point to Kershaw’s start in Game 2 of the NLCS. He tossed 6 innings and allowed 1 unearned run. Shouldn’t he have unravelled in that game if he were fatigued from the short rest start in the NLDS? One could argue that, but the way that McCarthy’s argument is setup leads one to believe that the “fatigue” could happen later and later. So, if the Dodgers won Game 6 and won Game 7, would McCarthy have expected Kershaw to unravel during one of his starts in the World Series?

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Let’s see if we can apply this lesson to decisions in other arenas. The analogy I used for the other post doesn’t really hold anymore. We’d be better off thinking about a decision for a business. Using Kershaw in the way the Dodgers did was almost like using a certain machine in the factory to fill some rush orders. The machine might only be able to fill a certain number of orders per week, but because it’s the holiday season, the boss thinks that running it on overdrive is necessary. Initially, the machine churns out the widgets just the way the boss would have expected, but next week when you use the machine, the widgets aren’t as high a quality. And then the week after that, the widgets aren’t even of a high enough quality to give away. It’s clear, the machine needs a break and some recalibration. In weighing the risk, the boss thought that using the machine more than usual was worth it for it potentially shutting down.

There are other ways we can map out this scenario, but I want you to think about how you might be overdoing it. Maybe the machine you use at work is fatiguing. Maybe you are fatiguing from working too hard.

Should the Los Angeles Dodgers Have Started Clayton Kershaw on 4 Days Rest?

A few days ago, there was a bit of a hullabaloo as the Los Angeles Dodgers decided they were going to start their star pitcher, Clayton Kershaw, in Game 4 on short rest. Let me back up for a second and explain a few things. Typically, starting pitchers in MLB get 5 days between starts. Meaning, if you pitched on Monday, you wouldn’t pitch again until Saturday. As we’re now into postseason baseball, some of the typical norms aren’t followed very closely. For example, last night in the elimination game between the Rays and the Red Sox, the Rays’ manager, Joe Maddon, changed the pitcher after the first inning even though the Red Sox hadn’t scored any runs! This is highly unorthodox. The Rays went on to lose last night, but as to whether that was a result of Maddon’s strategy is a post for another. Getting back to Kershaw and the Dodgers…

The Dodgers were up 2-1 in the series against the Atlanta Braves. Game 4 was to be played in Los Angeles. If the Dodgers won, they would move onto the next round of the playoffs. If the Braves won, there would be another game in Atlanta — Game 5 — to decide which of the two teams would advance. Kershaw pitched in Game 1 of the series, October 3rd, (and won). It was now October 7th, and the Dodgers’ manager, Don Mattingly, had decided that Kershaw was going to pitch in Game 4 that night.

There were many opinions about whether this was a good idea. There’s the “we’ve always done it this way” opinion that says you shouldn’t start Kershaw on short rest because that’s not how you do things. There’s also the mathematical opinion that starting Kershaw in Game 4 increased the Dodgers chances of winning Game 4.

In thinking about this decision that faced Mattingly, I was reminded of playing baseball when I was younger and being in double elimination tournaments. When it gets down near the end of the tournament, your pitchers are tired and some rules won’t let you pitch certain players more than a certain number of innings (depending on the league you’re playing in). So, coaches are often faced with the decision of starting their best pitcher in the semi-final game (or quarter-final) game to get onto the next round, where, quite possible, they won’t have anyone left to pitch. I’ve seen the strategy employed where one pitcher is held back in the “just in case” scenario. I understand why some coaches do this, but I don’t know that it’s the optimal strategy in most cases.

Elimination games are slightly different from games where you’re not facing elimination, but similar principles are used. Mattingly chose to use Kershaw in Game 4 instead of Game 5 because he thought it gave him the best chance to win. I totally respect that and if I were in his shoes, I think it’s the right call and the call that I would have made.

As it turns out, the Dodgers went on to win Game 4, so Mattingly’s use of Kershaw was vindicated. Even if the Dodgers lost, I still think that Mattingly would have made the right call in that situation. The mathematics supported Mattingly using Kershaw in Game 4 (to increase the Dodgers’ chances of winning Game 4).

~

I wanted to use this sports example as a way to pivot towards strategy and decisions in your own life — personal or professional. I want you to think about decisions that are coming up in your life. Are you holding back your “Clayton Kershaw” for the “do-or-die” situation later or are you using him/her to close the deal or make the change right now? There’s not necessarily a right or wrong way to do it, but in reading this post, I hope that you’re able to map this scenario onto your own life to identify those instances where you might not be putting your best foot forward in the here and now because you’re saving it for tomorrow.

Twitter vs. Tweeter and the Efficient-Market Hypothesis

This past Friday, I didn’t spend much time in front of the computer, but when I happened to pop onto Twitter to see if there was any news, I noticed a couple of tweets that were rather alarming:

Some folks may look at that and laugh or think it’s funny. I don’t. I think it’s embarrassing. First, I’m hoping that “investors” doesn’t necessarily mean people who manage other people’s money. If that’s the case, I would be very sorry for those people who happened to have someone managing their money that didn’t know the different between Twitter and Tweeter. Yes, I realize they’re very close, but when you’re investing money, don’t you want to be sure you know what you’re doing? Second, how can this mistake even be happening? I could see maybe a few people making this mistake, but for the stock to be up 489%? I wonder if maybe much of that extra trading was people realizing that other people think that it’s the Twitter stock, so they start buying the stock.

That last point really doesn’t make sense, though, because Twitter’s IPO just went public.

Another disheartening thing to think about as a result of Tweeter is the efficient-market hypothesis. This is a fancy way of saying that the stock market (or financial markets) should have the most current information. Meaning, if someone hears good news about company X, they’ll begin to buy that stock (which will make the stock rise and more people will hear the news and the stock will rise some more). This process continues until, theoretically speaking, the stock has reached the price that people are no longer willing to continue buying the stock.

Well, if we think about what happened on Friday, it certainly blows the efficient-market hypothesis out of the water. So, I ask again — how could so many people get that wrong?

 

Is Joe Girardi Really the Second Best Manager in Baseball?

Yesterday, I saw a headline that Joe Girardi was to get a “very generous” contract offer from the New York Yankees. I thought to myself, that’s strange. I thought that the Yankees didn’t make the playoffs this year. That’s right, the Yankees didn’t make the playoffs this year. In fact, the Yankees had their fewest win total since 1992 and missed the playoffs for only the 2nd time in the last 19 season. Do you know who the manager was the last time the Yankees missed the playoffs? Joe Girardi.

Now, before I go on, I want to be clear that I have nothing against Joe Girardi. From everything I’ve read about the guy (and seen), he seems really great. While my favourite team is the Toronto Blue Jays, that doesn’t mean that I have to dislike the managers of opposing teams.

As I was saying, Girardi and the Yankees missed the playoffs this year. They also missed the playoffs in 2008 (Girardi’s first year as a manager of the Yankees). As an aside, I guess it goes to show you just how successful Joe Torre was as the manager of the Yankees. He was the manager from 1996 through 2007 and the Yankees went to the playoffs every year. In Joe Girardi’s tenure as the manager of the Yankees, they’ve gone to the playoffs 4 times (out of 6 seasons) and won the World Series once.

Of particular note, are the last three years for Girardi. Why? Because he signed a new 3-year contract after the 2010 season. So, how’s Girardi fared over the last 3 years? In 2011, the Yankees won their division and made the playoffs, but lost to the Detroit Tigers in the division series. In 2012, the Yankees won their division (again) and made the playoffs. This time, they won the division series against the Baltimore Orioles. However, in the league championship series against the Detroit Tigers, the Yankees lost. In 2013, the Yankees finished tied for third in the division and didn’t make the playoffs.

Just for comparison’s sake, let’s take another American League manager over the last three years. Since the Yankees have lost to the Tigers two years in a row, let’s look at how they’ve performed behind the leadership of Jim Leyland. In 2011, the Tigers finished first in their division and made the playoffs. As I mentioned, they beat the Yankees in the league division series. During the league championship series, the Tigers lost to the Texas Rangers. In 2012, the Tigers finished first in their division. They beat the Oakland Athletics in the league division series and then beat the Yankees in the league championship series. However, they couldn’t beat the San Francisco Giants in the World Series. In 2013, the Tigers finished first in their division and are currently playing in the league division series against the Oakland Athletics. In Game 1, they won 3-2. Game 2 of the series is tonight. While the Tigers still have a ways to go before they return to the World Series, they’re a lot closer than Joe Girardi’s Yankees.

Jim Leyland has been making $2 million a year since he signed with the Tigers and has agreed to maintain that salary moving forward. During Girardi’s last contract, he was making $3 million a year. This new offer is said to make him the second highest paid manager in baseball. The current highest paid manager makes $5 million a year.

I realize that some folks will want to take into account different things like playing in a high-profile market like New York, but others would simply say it’s all about winning the World Series. In looking at all of this, the question then becomes: is Girardi really the second best manager in baseball?