Tag Archives: random
Watching Sports on TV is a Waste of Time
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st January 2019I used to watch sports on TV. But doing so is another activity the internet has rendered unnecessary. The three to four hours spent watching a series of commercials interspersed with a few minute of football is time that could be spent in a useful endeavor like a long nap. You could record the game…
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In Search of the Random
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th October 2014Baseball’s annual encounter with randomness is well underway. I’ve already written about this – here and here. But the baseball playoffs allow revisiting the topic. Baseball is a sport where the best team loses almost as many games as it wins. Thus, a very large sample size is required to determine which team is the…
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The Drunkard’s Walk and the World Series
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th October 2012The Drunkards Walk is a book by Leonard Mlodinow which examines the ubiquity of randomness in all things human. As our annual celebration of randomness, The World Series, is now underway another look at the random seems worth an at bat. Baseball is a game where the “best” team often loses to a “weaker” team. It’s rare…
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Why the Baseball Playoffs are an Elaborate Coin Toss
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th October 2011Consider this: According to Elias, out of the 52 best-of-seven series in baseball history to be tied 2-2 after four games, as this one was, the winner of Game 5 went on to win the series 36 times, or 69 percent of the time… The author of this insight got paid for making it. A while…
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