Statistics
I admit it. I am a statsaholic. I have faith in the numbers and what they mean.
Growing up, I was a rabid baseball fan. I rooted for the Yankees and Padres (because of Graig Nettles and Goose Gossage, of course). Every Sunday they listed the team and individual batting numbers and pitching numbers. I followed Mattingly, Nettles, Guidry, Reggie. I was amazed by Ricky Henderson and his stolen base numbers. For a couple of years, Doc Gooden blew me away.
At the same time, I used to watch the stock market. I would follow a few stocks and see how they would rise and fall, and I kept track of them.
In college I minored in Criminal Justice. My love of numbers moved to crime rates. I was so deviously proud that my hometown had such a high crime rate. At the time White Plains topped the list of crimes per 1,000 residents in Westchester, more than Yonkers, Mount Vernon or any other municipality.
Later I came to understand a few things about the numbers I knew so well. Baseball "stats" weren't statistics at all. In fact, it's just baseball accounting. Even sabremetrics is flawed regarding statistics (but that is for another blog).
Tracking stocks, at least the way that I did it, was not going to be an indicator of future performance. In fact, as I learned later while studying for my MBA, even the formulas used by experts cannot forecast properly.
And crime statistics don't tell the whole story. The fact that White Plains' population at the time doubled every day with workers and shoppers and visitors certainly bloated its crime rate.
To me, numbers -- and more specifically, statistics -- still tell quite a story. They just don't tell the whole story. One needs to look at reasons for the numbers and, when possible, be able to explain them. Sometimes, numbers tell a piece of the story, but more numbers are needed to tell the whole story.
One thing I've noticed, though, is that most of the time the numbers do not lie.
In the next few days something is going to happen that impacts numbers, specifically numbers I've mentioned in this rant. Consider this to be a prologue to my discussion on the event when it happens.
Growing up, I was a rabid baseball fan. I rooted for the Yankees and Padres (because of Graig Nettles and Goose Gossage, of course). Every Sunday they listed the team and individual batting numbers and pitching numbers. I followed Mattingly, Nettles, Guidry, Reggie. I was amazed by Ricky Henderson and his stolen base numbers. For a couple of years, Doc Gooden blew me away.
At the same time, I used to watch the stock market. I would follow a few stocks and see how they would rise and fall, and I kept track of them.
In college I minored in Criminal Justice. My love of numbers moved to crime rates. I was so deviously proud that my hometown had such a high crime rate. At the time White Plains topped the list of crimes per 1,000 residents in Westchester, more than Yonkers, Mount Vernon or any other municipality.
Later I came to understand a few things about the numbers I knew so well. Baseball "stats" weren't statistics at all. In fact, it's just baseball accounting. Even sabremetrics is flawed regarding statistics (but that is for another blog).
Tracking stocks, at least the way that I did it, was not going to be an indicator of future performance. In fact, as I learned later while studying for my MBA, even the formulas used by experts cannot forecast properly.
And crime statistics don't tell the whole story. The fact that White Plains' population at the time doubled every day with workers and shoppers and visitors certainly bloated its crime rate.
To me, numbers -- and more specifically, statistics -- still tell quite a story. They just don't tell the whole story. One needs to look at reasons for the numbers and, when possible, be able to explain them. Sometimes, numbers tell a piece of the story, but more numbers are needed to tell the whole story.
One thing I've noticed, though, is that most of the time the numbers do not lie.
In the next few days something is going to happen that impacts numbers, specifically numbers I've mentioned in this rant. Consider this to be a prologue to my discussion on the event when it happens.
posted by E-Luv at 9:15 AM
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