Free-Floating Hostility

Sunday, April 02, 2006


Men Plan. God Laughs.

Anna read Moneyball soon after I did, but this year she has decided to play fantasy baseball for the first time. This is probably an example of what Trixie would call sports whoredom. For the people who don't know how fantasy sports work, you draft a team of individuals and as they accrue statistics you earn points. For someone who is studying biostatistics, it is the perfect sort of game. So Anna spent much of her week off (Spring Break) entering a large number of players and their statistics into the computer and then measuring distributions and other statistical things that make no sense to me. She ended up generating an impressive amount of information and a fairly unique draft board.

Of course on draft morning her computer couldn't properly accomodate the Java applet to the point where she could select players live. So then we both used my computer (one in Firefox, one in Explorer), which was a good solution until the sixth round when my wireless modem lost contact with the Internet for two rounds. My draft never really recovered, although Anna seems to have come through nicely. I am notoriously terrible at Fantasy Sports so I'm expecting to get my ass kicked yet again.

2 Comment(s):

  •   Posted by Blogger Rich at April 02, 2006 7:35 AM | Permanent Link to this Comment
  • I was afraid that Anna might be doing something like that. Not suprisingly, statistics told her not to draft too many closers or people who steal base. I guess these Moneyballers were on to something.

  •   Posted by Blogger Anna at April 02, 2006 10:58 AM | Permanent Link to this Comment
  • It's not my fault I couldn't use most of my data during the draft. It's yours, Goldman.

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