In baseball you have terrific data and you can be a lot more creative with it.
People gravitate toward information that implies a happier outlook for them.
The key to making a good forecast is not in limiting yourself to quantitative information.
Walk rate is probably the area in which a pitcher has the most room to improve, but a rate that high is tough to overcome.
To be a very, very minor, eighth-tier celebrity, you realize, ‘Hey, celebrities are just like us.’
I think punditry serves no purpose.
The problem is that when polls are wrong, they tend to be wrong in the same direction. If they miss in New Hampshire, for instance, they all miss on the same mistake.
People don’t have a good intuitive sense of how to weigh new information in light of what they already know. They tend to overrate it.
You don’t want to influence the same system you are trying to forecast.
In politics people build whole reputations off of getting one thing right.
Remember, the Congress doesn’t get as many opportunities to make an impression with the public.
I love South American food, and I haven’t really been down there. I really need a vacation.
Any one game in baseball doesn’t tell you that much, just as any one poll doesn’t tell you that much.
On average, people should be more skeptical when they see numbers. They should be more willing to play around with the data themselves.
I’ve just always been a bit of a dork.
You can build a statistical model and that’s all well and good, but if you’re dealing with a new type of financial instrument, for example, or a new type of situation – then the choices you’re making are pretty arbitrary in a lot of respects.
I don’t think that somebody who is observing or predicting behavior should also be participating in the ‘experiment.’
Whenever you have dynamic interactions between 300 million people and the American economy acting in really complex ways, that introduces a degree of almost chaos theory to the system, in a literal sense.
Race is still the No. 1 determinant in every election.
If you’re keeping yourself in the bubble and only looking at your own data or only watching the TV that fits your agenda then it gets boring.