Freakonomics looks at Baseball

[swordsman]

The Freakonomics guys looked at homeruns in baseball on Marketplace.

 

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/05/pm-freakonmics-radio-where-are-the-home-runs/

[NewUserName]

The Freakonomics guys looked at homeruns in baseball on Marketplace.

 

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/05/pm-freakonmics-radio-where-are-the-home-runs/

 

As always I dont always buy everything the freakonomics guys come up with. I think they have shown what a lot of wise GMs may have realized. The Moneyball high OBP guys were becoming more expensive, while the good defensive players were becoming less expensive. I think the A's have even gone this route the last few years to a certain degree.

[Sammy Sofa]

[expletive], that book is an abomination.

[NewUserName]

[expletive], that book is an abomination.

 

why? I thought it was a very entertaining read

[Sammy Sofa]

It is entertaining, but too many of the major conclusions and incredibly skewed and one-sided and are presented as the result of comprehensive analysis. He's a "rogue economist" in that he's ignoring a ton of other data and analysis to reach his conclusions.

 

This is an op-ed piece but it serves as a good intro as to a lot of the running problems with how the book was compiled and presented:

 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/10/the_shoddy_statistics_of_super.html

 

I take issue with Malcolm Gladwell often, too, but this is a well done breakdown:

 

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/03/thoughts_on_fre.html

[SpongeWorthy]

So the problems with the book Freakonomics can be attributed to the problems of its sequel? You realize Klein is talking about Super Freakonomics right? That came out just last year.

 

95% of the flak given to Levitt (who is the economist of the duo, the other author is just a journalist) is the position they took on geoengineering in Super Freakonomics and the assertion in Freakonomics that abortion reduced the crime rate in the US. Aside from those two positions (the geoengineering thing has almost nothing to do with economics, really) he's held in pretty high regard.

 

The rogue economist label is nothing more than marketing and an acknowledgement that he doesn't work on macroeconomic issues which is the vast majority of what you hear in the media. It'd be impossible for a UChicago economist, the mothership of all academic economic thinking pretty much, to be "rogue."

[Careless]

It is entertaining, but too many of the major conclusions and incredibly skewed and one-sided and are presented as the result of comprehensive analysis. He's a "rogue economist" in that he's ignoring a ton of other data and analysis to reach his conclusions.

 

This is an op-ed piece but it serves as a good intro as to a lot of the running problems with how the book was compiled and presented:

 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/10/the_shoddy_statistics_of_super.html

That's about a different book. And what Gladwell was writing about is probably the most heavily and widely criticized part of the book (although given the subject, you'd expect it would be even if his case was air-tight)

It'd be impossible for a UChicago economist, the mothership of all academic economic thinking pretty much, to be "rogue.

He could hack into the Journal of Economic Literature and insert his papers into upcoming issues

[Sammy Sofa]

So the problems with the book Freakonomics can be attributed to the problems of its sequel? You realize Klein is talking about Super Freakonomics right? That came out just last year.

 

Yes, I have the same problems with the sequel since both follow the same format/patterns.

 

They're both filled with lazy, factoid-style, shallow analysis. Like it was said, entertaining, but treated far too sacrosanct by many who read them.

[SpongeWorthy]

That's nothing more than vague hand waving.

[Sammy Sofa]

That's about all it deserves. It belongs in those all-purpose "trivia" sections in bookstores and libraries instead of current affairs or sociology or economics.

[SpongeWorthy]

You say that because you have nothing of substance to say and you're reflexively negative about absolutely everything.

 

I'm not saying all the assertions made in the pages of Freakonomics or its sequel are correct (to the extent that there are flat out assertions instead of hypotheses), but you would be very hard pressed to find any serious research flaws that have been leveled against Levitt's work as an academic economist that weren't about the abortion paper.

 

I mean you've already gone from calling it an abomination to entertaining but flawed in a matter of a couple posts...so I'm sure you just overcooked your initial statement as always.

[SpongeWorthy]

I'll just add that most of the material in the first book was abstracted from papers that passed peer review at the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

 

But mojo says the material can't pass muster and isn't worthy of inclusion next to Glenn Beck's new book in the current events section at Barnes and Noble.

[Sammy Sofa]

Damn right.

 

I explained why I don't like it. I think that too many of the conclusions and comparisons are too myopic and arbitrary and dismiss too many additional significant variables that would cast doubt (or at least different but comparably arguable conclusions) on the main conclusions. That doesn't mean that he's automatically wrong, but the book is inherently flawed, yet it was crowed over like it was some kind of remarkable socioeconomic analysis for the ages. It's not. It's essentially a Mary Roach book with more numbers, yet it's talked about like it's something that people "need" to read, and that's why I called it an "abomination," which should have been painfully obvious hyperbole.

 

Is it Levitt's fault that the book has been taken/marketed that way? Probably not. Like I said, it's certainly entertaining and can get the reader thinking, but personally I found the book to be trying to get people to think in a very uncritical way and to ultimately just agree with Levitt's conclusions.

[NewUserName]

Damn right.

 

I explained why I don't like it. I think that too many of the conclusions and comparisons are too myopic and arbitrary and dismiss too many additional significant variables that would cast doubt (or at least different but comparably arguable conclusions) on the main conclusions. That doesn't mean that he's automatically wrong, but the book is inherently flawed, yet it was crowed over like it was some kind of remarkable socioeconomic analysis for the ages. It's not. It's essentially a Mary Roach book with more numbers, yet it's talked about like it's something that people "need" to read, and that's why I called it an "abomination," which should have been painfully obvious hyperbole.

 

Is it Levitt's fault that the book has been taken/marketed that way? Probably not. Like I said, it's certainly entertaining and can get the reader thinking, but personally I found the book to be trying to get people to think in a very uncritical way and to ultimately just agree with Levitt's conclusions.

 

so your real issue is that a lot of people do not do their own critical thinking?

[hardcorecubfan]

That's about all it deserves. It belongs in those all-purpose "trivia" sections in bookstores and libraries instead of current affairs or sociology or economics.

 

Though I agree partially with your assessment, Levitt was very good for Economist as a profession. He brought a human spin to a fairly sterile, stat only profession and got the ordinary person thinking in economic terms.

[Sammy Sofa]

Damn right.

 

I explained why I don't like it. I think that too many of the conclusions and comparisons are too myopic and arbitrary and dismiss too many additional significant variables that would cast doubt (or at least different but comparably arguable conclusions) on the main conclusions. That doesn't mean that he's automatically wrong, but the book is inherently flawed, yet it was crowed over like it was some kind of remarkable socioeconomic analysis for the ages. It's not. It's essentially a Mary Roach book with more numbers, yet it's talked about like it's something that people "need" to read, and that's why I called it an "abomination," which should have been painfully obvious hyperbole.

 

Is it Levitt's fault that the book has been taken/marketed that way? Probably not. Like I said, it's certainly entertaining and can get the reader thinking, but personally I found the book to be trying to get people to think in a very uncritical way and to ultimately just agree with Levitt's conclusions.

 

so your real issue is that a lot of people do not do their own critical thinking?

 

Yes and no. Part of the problem is that the authors repeatedly encourage people to engage in critical thinking (especially of one's own conclusions) trough the examples they provide, yet they are distinctly uncritical about their conclusions throughout the book despite often providing scenarios where the reader is essentially required to ignore sometimes seemingly countless additional data points to reach the author's conclusions. It's ironic that they repeatedly stress that people shouldn't fall into the easy trap of thinking that causation automatically equals correlation, yet that's what they themselves do numerous times throughout the book.

 

Here's a blog post that does a good job of summing up my issues with the book:

 

The scientific fidelity of social science is a topic of heated contention in academics. Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have successfully brought this debate to the mainstream in the form of their joint book, Freakonomics. But do they make a strong case for validating statistical analyses of an infinitely complex human society?

 

As any statistician will tell you, one of the major pitfalls of their field is the confusion of correlation and causation. Just because X and Y have similar trends does not necessarily mean that X caused Y or that Y caused X. Numerous times throughout the book, Levitt and Dubner chastise various experts, pundits, and conventional wisdoms for failing to observe this basic tenet. Yet so tempting is this trap that the authors fall right in along with their targets.

 

Take, for example, the chapter on parenting. A full six paragraphs are devoted to warning about correlation versus causation, the caution of which is thrown immediately to the wind with a set of highly dubious stabs at the causes of various correlations regarding parenting. The data in question comes from Levitt's regression analysis of numerous factors which conventional wisdom believes may play some role in the academic outcome of children. So, for example, correlations were found between a child's test scores and the number of books the parents have in their house, but not how often the parents read to the child. So far, so good. The authors then conclude from similar datapoints that it is the nature of the parents' lives that influence a child's scores, not what the parents do. Granted, it has a certain logical appeal, but it amounts to no more than an educated guess. What's wrong with that? you may ask.

 

The problems with this example illustrate some of the major difficulties associated with social science. What you may notice about the correlations is that - by necessity - they lack a certain level of detail. What *kind* of books to the parents have? What kind do they read to their child? How often does a child actually pick up one of numerous books? These are questions for which there are few or no practical solutions. The reasons are manifold, including: the number of data points may never be enough (consider how many categories you may have to break predominating book types into: comic books, encyclopedias, TV trivia, etc.); you never know which test subject is lying, exaggerating, or remembering incorrectly; and you can never be sure that test scores are the right thing to measure.

 

This last difficulty is made more extreme when you consider the following quote from Freakonomics: "Sorry. Culture cramming may be a foundational belief of obsessive parenting, but the ECLS data show no correlation between museum visits and test scores." There should be little surprise at the lack of correlation: there are very few things that a museum offers that would help on the SATs or state exams. But that doesn't mean that museum visits have no positive impact on the intelligence of a child. The authors make the mistake of equating test scores to intelligence. It may very well be true that a child that goes to museums will score no better on entrance exams than a child that doesn't, but it may affect which hobbies they take up, their job performance, and various other important aspects of life that have little or nothing to do with measurable intelligence.

 

Similar errors in thinking occur throughout the book. In the bagel-seller example, statistics are carelessly and bizarrely used to justify a stance on morality. Because only 13% of people failed to pay for bagels when left out with a payment box, the authors conclude that the majority - in fact, 87% - of people have an innate honesty. I was floored by this kind of uncritical thinking. People may have paid out of fear of getting caught or out of guilt, but not necessarily out of honesty. But more so than that, honesty in one small area of life does not an honest man make. If Dubner and Levitt wanted to conclude simply that statistics is useful for understanding human motivation, that would be fine. But to make sweeping generalizations about whether humans are born innately good or innately bad on a single study is simply irresponsible.

 

The only positive thing to say about Freakonomics is that it makes you think. But any controversial book can do that. Though there are some fairly solid examples in the book such as regards the real estate agents, the sumo wrestlers, and the cheating teachers, overall the book is uncritical of its own thinking. It would be fine if Levitt and Dubner acknowledged that there may be other interpretations at least as good as their own, but they choose instead to pontificate their own views, in flagrant violation of their professed objectivism. And oddly enough, I happen to agree with most of their views, just not with how they reached them. Levitt is clearly a brilliant man, and I hope he continues to churn out interesting statistical correlations on unusual subjects... but he and Dubner ought to leave the interpretations to others.

[Guest]

So you'd rather they have written a 5000 page book that fully vetted all alternatives instead of being concise?

[Sammy Sofa]

So you'd rather they have written a 5000 page book that fully vetted all alternatives instead of being concise?

 

No, I wish this one had been better written and not so contradictory in its own repeated dogma. If they can't live up to the most basic thing they keep harping on others for, then they shouldn't have presented their work as demonstrating a different type of critical thinking. Instead, because they repeat enough times that they're presenting a "different approach" to economics so it's easy to see why the average reviewer/reader is just going to go along with that. In that scenario, yes, both readers and writers are "at fault," but I take more issue with the writers since they're the ones presenting skewed conclusions that obviously fall under the easy causation = correlation umbrella. I don't expect all alternatives to be examined, but too often these scenarios are presented like there are NO other significant alternatives, and like Levitt has stumbled across a type of golden ratio when it comes to breaking down these stats.

[Tracer Bullet]

I enjoyed reading freakonomics (and the sequel) and gladwell's books. They're fun to read. They aren't gospel and, as with any book (including the gospel), you shouldn't stop thinking critically about the information or conclusions presented and maybe even be skeptical of them.

 

But now I have a reference that tells me when a Chicago hooker is overcharging me for a BJ and for that I am eternally grateful.

[SouthSideRyan]

 

But now I have a reference that tells me when a Chicago hooker is overcharging me for a BJ and for that I am eternally grateful.

 

Why didn't anybody tell me that's what the book was about?

[Tracer Bullet]

i can't speak for everyone, but i assumed you were the source of the bulk of the data

[treebird]

i can't speak for everyone, but i assumed you were the source of the bulk of the data

 

you were thinking of mizzou, i make the same mistake all the time

[champaignchris]

An article about using stats to understand why scoring is down says this: "[Doug Glanville] was a great fielder; in fact, he ended his career on a streak of 293 consecutive games without an error."

 

Is it me, or does that number seem pretty insignificant for a guy who ended his career primarily as a bench player, who only had to field about one and a quarter fly balls per game he appeared in over that stretch. I mean, it's pretty easy to extend an errorless streak when you come into the game in the 8th inning as a pinch runner and then play one inning in the field. And I'm putting aside the entire question of whether errors and fielding percentage are a good way to evaluate fielding in the first place.