Super Crunchers Analysis
* Orley Ashenfelter- Uses statistics to extract hidden info from large datasets * Orley’s Wine Predictions * What really got him in trouble is crunching numbers to assess the quality of Bordeaux wines. He found that low levels of harvest rain/high avg. summer temps produce the greatest wines
Reduced his wine theory to a formula; he can predict the general quality of any vintage by plugging weather statistics for a given year into formula. NOT well received by traditional wine critics
BUT, unlike the traditional critics who have to wait months to taste the wines, Orley could compute his predictions right away (he published them in a newsletter called Liquid Assets)
1990 New York Times Article on his prediction machine greatly intensified …show more content…
hitter is not visible-it’s a matter of record”
Created a formula to measure a hitter’s contribution to runs created; it put more emphasis on a player’s on base %
The Oakland A’s 2002 drafting of scout-hated Jeremy Brown was based solely on hard numbers; Brown progressed faster than anyone else drafted to the A’s that year, proving the scouts wrong * Parallels b/w Orley/James in both contexts, ppl are trying to predict the MV of untested/immature products; the central dispute of both is whether to rely on observational expertise or quantitative
Reduced his wine theory to a formula; he can predict the general quality of any vintage by plugging weather statistics for a given year into formula. NOT well received by traditional wine critics
BUT, unlike the traditional critics who have to wait months to taste the wines, Orley could compute his predictions right away (he published them in a newsletter called Liquid Assets)
1990 New York Times Article on his prediction machine greatly intensified …show more content…
hitter is not visible-it’s a matter of record”
Created a formula to measure a hitter’s contribution to runs created; it put more emphasis on a player’s on base %
The Oakland A’s 2002 drafting of scout-hated Jeremy Brown was based solely on hard numbers; Brown progressed faster than anyone else drafted to the A’s that year, proving the scouts wrong * Parallels b/w Orley/James in both contexts, ppl are trying to predict the MV of untested/immature products; the central dispute of both is whether to rely on observational expertise or quantitative