Statistics

I learned long-ago, when I began flying 100,000 miles a year, for twenty consecutive, that if I wanted to travel without interruption from my seatmate, a sure way to guarantee silence was to answer with three words the inevitable question, "what do you do for a living?"  Telling them, "I teach statistics," worked every time.

Nothing quiets people up faster than the revelation that you work with numbers.  I don't know, maybe admitting you are an accountant would chill conversation as well.  I don't think so, someone might ask you a question about their taxes.  But statistics?  Backdoor slider.  Freeze them everytime.

The truth of it was, I really did teach stat, or quantitative methods as it came to be called in the social sciences and I really enjoyed it.  It actually became one of my favorite courses to teach.  Which was funny, because growing up I hated math.  And to this day, I dread the calculation of even fairly simple arithmetic.

So what turned me into a numbers geek, nimble with all sorts of statistical tools on up to complex multiple regression models?

Baseball.  Long before today's so-called "analytics" or sabremetrics or Money Ball the game inspired a supportive cottage industry that allowed fans to savor the game contest-by-contest, season-by-season, all through numbers.  I never saw a professional game until I was 13, but years earlier I had learned how to figure out, represent actually, what had occurred in a game by reading the "box score" in the morning newspaper.

What a brilliant invention.  Here's a classic one from my childhood, 1957.

Real baseball fans will recognize this one right away.  It's the Dodgers' last game in Brooklyn before moving to LA.  I can see it all.  Those bare, stark numbers tell the whole story.  A quick game, just over two hours before a small crowd of 6,702.  A pitcher’s duel, the Dodgers getting to Daniels early, who allowed Gilliam and Cimoli to get on base and Valo, who doubled and Hodges to drive them in. 

To be continued....