Saturday, January 17, 2015
How do I respond to this guy?
?I received an email, which I will post in its entirety (including the lack of introductions, etc):
Every single weight you have seems arbitrary to me. Where is the proof?
(0.72xNIBB + 0.75xHBP + 0.90x1B + 0.92xRBOE + 1.24x2B + 1.56x3B + 1.95xHR) / PA
Do you have some regression test of all the data in baseball that revealed these weights to a 95% statistical significance? What is the dependent variable? Runs Scored? After every year, would these weights not change after running the test?
Running a regression test isn't complicated. It's first year undergrad engineering stuff. Why people accept your weights as doctrine with zero statistical evidence is astonishing.
Soooooo..... where do I begin? He obviously did not read The Book, where I go into detail as to how this was developed. And he obviously did not look at the excerpt on The Book site. He did not google wOBA, as the first link brings you to this Fangraphs page which lists the wOBA weights year by year going back to 1871.
Instead.... he made up non-facts and treated them as facts (aka strawman). Then used those non-facts as arguments to form his opinion. In the end, we have a summary opinion with no evidence, which is the definition of bullsh!t. And there's no reason to argue with bullsh!t, which is why I instead took advantage of his bullsh!t email to at least show a few links about wOBA to those who may not be aware.
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 151 pages 1 2 3 > Last ›Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date
FORUM TOPICS
Jul 12 15:22 MarcelsApr 16 14:31 Pitch Count Estimators
Mar 12 16:30 Appendix to THE BOOK - THE GORY DETAILS
Jan 29 09:41 NFL Overtime Idea
Jan 22 14:48 Weighting Years for NFL Player Projections
Jan 21 09:18 positional runs in pythagenpat
Oct 20 15:57 DRS: FG vs. BB-Ref
Apr 12 09:43 What if baseball was like survivor? You are eliminated ...
Nov 24 09:57 Win Attribution to offense, pitching, and fielding at the game level (prototype method)
Jul 13 10:20 How to watch great past games without spoilers