Baseball Statistics

Rex Stout’s Three Men Out is a collection of three shorter Nero Wolfe mysteries—one of which involves baseball, hence the title.  Decent stories—certainly not among the Best of Nero Wolfe.

Two of the stories, though, got me thinking about things only marginally related to the stories.

1. Baseball.  Nero Wolfe actually left his apartment and went to the World Series, which is kind of funny.  But baseball is a bit depressing right now.  Not only is my fantasy baseball team marginally hanging on (amazing pitching, but my goodness, the rest of my team cannot hit (Someone once said there is nothing more boring than listening to someone else talk about his fantasy baseball team)).  The never ending A-Rod story along with the rest of the PED suspensions is…well, bad for baseball.  Seriously bad.  Coming off the Steroid Era, we now enter the PED era.  During the slow demise of Barry Bonds, at least we could all hope that someday Mr. Clean A-Rod would break Bonds’ record and then we wouldn't be faced with the Asterisk forever.  Now A-Rod is also going down.  We may never see another 50 HR season and even 40 HR seasons are looking like they may become a rarity.  Now, I don’t mind the drop in the long ball; I like great pitching as well as great hitting (much as in football a low scoring defensive battle is every bit as fascinating to me as the high scoring affair), but I do mind the idea that baseball for most of my adult life has been inherently tainted.  Ryne Sandberg, my favorite player when I was younger, is now managing the Phillies, and all that does is remind me of a time when baseball seemed pure and innocent.  It took me a long time to get back to being interested in baseball after the Strike that cancelled the World Series.  The Ryan Braun (Ryan Braun!) suspension was depressing—not as bad as the Strike, to be sure, but even still.

At least football season is starting soon.  And football is the Superior Sport, so all will soon be good.

(And, as an aside, they really need to cancel televising of these pre-season games.  I feel compelled to watch, because, well, it is the Raiders, but to pretend these are games instead of glorified practice is hard to do.)

2. Statistics.  Nero Wolfe has a rival who predicts everything using statistics.  The Rival is murdered.  Wolfe solves the crime.  (A solution, by the way, which requires esoteric knowledge of ancient Hindu numbering conventions.)  The statistician in the story is absurd; as a statistician he should know better than to think Statistics could actually predict all the things he advertises it as being able to predict.  But, that doesn’t mitigate the fact that Statistics is one of those things which everyone should learn.

The thoughts about Statistics are prompted by the current debate in MHC Faculty Meetings about the future of Distribution Requirements.  The plan on the table is to simplify them considerably.  The Language folks are up in arms about this, and will undoubtedly be proposing to keep the Language requirement.  Much (much!) intensity in insisting that languages are really important.  Those arguments leave me puzzled.

In my Nirvanic college, there would be two to three years of required courses, and studying a foreign language would certainly be among those requirements.  (My Nirvanic college attracts zero students and dies a quick financial death, by the way.)  So, I completely agree about the importance of learning languages to be liberally educated.  But, imagine a college was going to have one and only one requirement to take a course with a particular content.  What course should be the one required course?  There are lots of possibilities, to be sure, but after thinking about it for some months now, I would pick Statistics.  Everyone graduating from college should have a college-level statistics course. 

Think about Faculty meetings, for example (rarely a pleasant subject on which to think, I know, but bear with me).  In all my years of attending them, I have never once witnessed a discussion which devolved into absurdity because of a lack of knowledge of a foreign language.  But, regularly (and by regularly, I mean every two or three years at a minimum), a discussion will become unbelievably ridiculous because a subset of the faculty know absolutely nothing about statistics.  Recently, for example, a professor (in the languages no less) stood up and said that while he saw the numbers from the large survey saying that most people think X, he knows that most people don’t think  X  because he has a niece who does not.  I am not exaggerating.  Proof by anecdote.  Don’t even think about putting a simple regression in front of faculty; the ensuing conversation would be embarrassing. 

So, why would anyone argue that two semesters of learning Bulgarian is more important than one semester of learning Statistics?  Well, obviously self-interest plays a role—if you are in a language department, it would be a good thing to require students to take language courses.  There is also the feel good “See how Cosmopolitan I am?  I am arguing for the importance of learning French!” showmanship going on.  At this point, though, I am going to start getting snarky about Faculty meetings, which is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel and probably about as interesting as hearing about my fantasy baseball team.

So, a musical postscript to remind us all of a better day when colleges had requirements and when baseball was pure.