Individual Poster Page

See copyright notice at the bottom of this page.

List of All Posters

Cities with best players (October 23, 2003)

Posted 10:13 a.m., October 24, 2003 (#22) - mathteamcoach
  Instead of discussing where players played, wouldn't it be more interesting to discuss place of birth?

HOOPSWORLD.com Review: Pro Basketball Prospectus 2003-04 Edition (November 18, 2003)

Posted 10:07 a.m., November 25, 2003 (#12) - mathteamcoach(e-mail)
  A question for those who create their own simialrity scores and/or projections:

What program or programming language do you use?

I have lots of ideas about creating projections and similarity scores, not only for baseball, but also for basketball. My problem is that I can't seem to organize all of the data that I have efficiently enough to make using excel easy to generate projections/similarity scores. I have a Master's in mathematics, so the statistics is not my problem -- my problem is getting the computer to cooperate with my ideas in the most efficient way possible.

Can anyone offer some suggestions?

You can email me if it is easier: mathteamcoach@charter.net

Dick Allen's Baseball Blog - Baserunning (December 1, 2003)

Posted 3:37 p.m., December 4, 2003 (#1) - mathteamcoach
  I'm feeling bad that this post has gotten no interest. Dick Allen, you have a nice blog, keep it going!

Are these numbers accounting for pinch runners? It doesn't seem so. Many of the 'A' rated players are pinch-runner types, and if you are dividing the number of times the player scored by the number of times he reached first on his own merit, you are missing all of the times he was put on 1st or 2nd or 3rd base by his manager.

Run scoring is such a team-oriented statistic, I don't know how much this number tells us. Maybe someone could answer, or already has answered, this question: when a runner scores a run, how much of the credit should he get for that run? Pinch-runners certainly deserve a lot less than the guys who batted (or walked or whatever) their way onto the bases.

Marcel, The Monkey, Forecasting System (December 1, 2003)

Posted 2:02 p.m., December 4, 2003 (#27) - mathteamcoach
  Who is Marcel named after: Marcel Lachemann, Marcelino Lopez or
Marcelino Solis?

Marcel, The Monkey, Forecasting System (December 1, 2003)

Posted 3:26 p.m., December 4, 2003 (#29) - mathteamcoach
  Koko, I know. Marcel? I would never have known that. I am an element of the set of people who have never sat through an entire episode of Friends. I wonder how many of us there are?

Anyway, now when I play the 20th anniv. edition of Trivial Pursuit, I'll know the answer to the corresponding question.

Century-old math problem may have been solved (January 8, 2004)

Posted 12:17 p.m., January 9, 2004 (#2) - mathteamcoach
  Yes, but can he solve DIPS?

Maybe DIPS is a Hausdorff space.

Obscure Rule Flags Students Who Sharply Improve SAT Scores (January 21, 2004)

Posted 9:21 a.m., January 22, 2004 (#4) - mathteamcoach
  I think that this allegation is similar to the situation surrounding Stand and Deliver , the movie highlighting the somewhat-true story of Jaime Escalante's Advanced Placement calculus students. They were accused of cheating on the AP calculus exam because most of the students' incorrect answers where the same. It turned out that Escanlante taught his students various "shortcuts" to solving particular type of problems that didn't work in certain situations. So, the algorithms that they learned produced the same wrong answers for certain problems.

By the way, I am a high school teacher, and have proctored the SAT at our school. By my impressions, it seems that there are different forms of the SAT given to students in the same room. Then, I think, the seating plan for the students ensures that one particular form is not near another form, so that if someone does try to copy answers, they would be wrong.

There is a good book indicting the SAT and all of the conspiracy theories surrounding it called None of the Above

Obscure Rule Flags Students Who Sharply Improve SAT Scores (January 21, 2004)

Posted 11:15 a.m., January 22, 2004 (#8) - mathteamcoach (homepage)
  Apparently, ETS, the organization that administers the SAT, has lost cases like this that have been tried in court. See the homepage link for a 1995 case in NY.

Obscure Rule Flags Students Who Sharply Improve SAT Scores (January 21, 2004)

Posted 3:46 p.m., January 22, 2004 (#12) - mathteamcoach
  Does Mathteamcoach/anyone know of a source for determining what the historical average SAT scores have been?

This is a difficult question to answer because, in the last 10-15 years, the College Board has tinkered with the SAT and its scoring system so many times I lost track of what is significant and what isn't. First, before say 1995 (approximately), the SAT itself changed very little. At the inception of the SAT, the scores were "centered" at 500 (meaning the average score on either the verbal or math section was 500 on a scale of 200 to 800). Over time, as more and more students took the exam, the average scores continued to fall until in the late 80's when the average scores were in the low to mid 400's. In 1995 (or so), the college board decided to re-center the scores so that the average returned back to 500. So, in effect, a scaled score of say 450 in 1985 was now equivalent to a 500 in 1995. In addition to toying with the scaled scores, a lot of the exams content has been changed. Writing portions have been added, certain types of multiple choice questions have been removed, etc... All of this makes it difficult to compare SAT across different periods of time. There is a book that talks about this in much more depth entitled A Manufactured Crisis , published in about 1994 or 1995 (pre-re-centering of the SAT). The book is a very liberal look at education in America, but it does contain an enlightening chapter discussing the history of the SAT.

What the breakdowns might be by region, school districts, etc. Lefty vs. righty splits :)

What state are you living in? In Massachusetts, every high school publishes a school profile containing all kinds of data: SAT scores, # of National Merit Finalists, % of students who go onto college, etc. To get these profiles, you need only inquire to the school.

Do private schools generally publish their student's average scores? Sources?

Yes. I assume that individual private schools would be happy to give you their "profile" as well. In Massachusetts, there are many public school that are MUCH better than some of the private and parochial schools (in my opinion -- I have taught in a private, catholic-affiliated high school and also in a high school in an adjacent town. I would actaully prefer to send my child to a public school before a private school). So, be careful; don't always assume that a private school is a better option. The exceptions are the schools that charge college-like tuition fees (Exeter, Choate, Deerfield Acad., etc.)

Of course, it is ultimately a Moneyball question. One has to compare the costs (including pesky taxes) and benefits. I may be a Yankee fan, but I may have to spend my educational dollars like Oakland.

Yup. There is a strong correlation between socio-economic status of a community and their quality of education. I haven't studied the issue, but the towns in Massachusetts that have the highest average SAT scores are certainly the towns with the highest median home price. Taxes are through the roof, and even when tax rates don't go up here, property taxes still go up because real estate in Massachusetts is like gold and the assessments are increasing like crazy.

Obscure Rule Flags Students Who Sharply Improve SAT Scores (January 21, 2004)