Research January 17, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Academia, US Politics.Tags: Amherst, corruption, Harry Williams, housing prices, property tax, reassessments, Research, Satish Mohan, working papers
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This semester’s research note involved data collection and analysis regarding housing prices in Amherst, New York. The paper, which I’ve posted in PDF format here, contains a detailed description of my methodology and results. Data and SAS code are available by request.
With the usual caveats about sample size (as discussed in the paper), it seems that officials were systematically under-assessed and so carried a lower-than-expected property tax burden.
Leftist long-division October 8, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Canada.Tags: Canada, divided left, editorials, elections, Globe and Mail, NoDice.ca, politics, Research
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Professor Judy Rebick of Ryerson University looks at the polling numbers and points out that a coalition government of the three left-wing parties (the Liberals, the New Democratic Party, and the Green Party) with the Bloc Quebecois would undoubtedly defeat the Conservatives in the upcoming October 14 election. Would it really require all four parties?
Bailouts! September 25, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Andy Pettitte, Baseball, John Garland, Nate Robertson, Research, Reverse quality starts, Sean Bergman, Sidney Ponson, weird lines
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That’s right… in the interest of keeping up with this week’s news about the $700b bailout of the financial sector, I’m going to take a look at key instances of bailouts by the bullpen.
Pitchers with 4+ RBIs (Sorry, Mets fans) September 23, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Academia, Baseball.Tags: Baseball, Cubs, Diamondbacks, economics, Felix Hernandez, Jason Marquis, Larry Christenson, Mets, Micah Owings, Pitchers batting, Research
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Last night, the Cubs’ Jason Marquis hit a rare grand slam. Even rarer is that Marquis was the starting pitcher and got the win. Still rarer: Marquis had one hit and 5 RBIs.
That raises the question: just how common an event is Jason’s productivity?
Silly bean counters September 7, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, economics, Research, sabermetrics
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I came across the Beane Count, invented by ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer, by accident. My first thought: “That’s crap. Just summing ranks doesn’t accomplish anything.” My second thought: “How can I prove this?”
My third through nth thoughts involved my standard method of creating a needlessly complex spreadsheet using data culled from ESPN.com. The results were quite surprising.
Wins Above Expectation (with a side of run differential) September 1, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Angels, Baseball, Blue Jays, Rays, Research, sabermetrics
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In continuing my thoughts about the Pythagorean Expectation from about a week ago, I took a look at the MLB standings for the period ending August 31, 2008. I played with the stats a little bit, since I haven’t really thought through the basis for most of them.
Today’s project: find Pythagorean expectations for each team, then find the difference between the actual and expected win percentages (“pythagorean difference”). Apply the pythagorean difference to the total number of games played to determine a team’s Wins Above Expectation by multiplying the total number of games by the pythagorean difference.
Practical application: none.
Discussion and numbers behind the cut.
Things I spend a lot of time thinking about August 3, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Uncategorized.Tags: beer, brewing, economics, Mets, Research, sabermetrics, Yankees
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Baseball generally, the New York teams specifically, applied economics, sabermetrics (wait, those two are the same thing), Canada, Canadian politics, rational choice theory in professional sports, homebrewing, the hop shortage, torbie cats named Samantha, US politics, Brewery Ommegang.
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