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Latest Read: Moneyball

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. Indeed statistics and the valuation of people is a great overview of this book. Lewis is a great storyteller and respected author. Unquestionably he delivers a great story about baseball.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

They say “the book is always better than the movie.” This is so very true. If you found the movie’s portrayal of the medieval approach to drafting players, then Lewis book will take you down the rabbit hole of professional baseball.

Lewis addresses the career of Beane from high school. The odd story of Beane playing with Darryl Strawberry (also right out of high school) and Lenny Dykstra could go on forever.

Amazing the Mets saw Beane as the emerging star over Strawberry but did not support Beane’s slumps that all those scouts and coaches should have long scene coming.

Moneyball certainly offers readers a great in-depth view of how Billy hired Paul DePodesta to apply Sabermetrics allowing Beane to ‘count the cards at the blackjack table’ and make the small market team defeat Goliath.

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Latest read: The Signal and the Noise

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t by Nate Silver is another great book that completely absorbed my attention. This book offers in sights to many audiences. From weather forecasts, the Wall Street financial crisis in 2007, playing poker to even understanding and identifying signal relationships regarding the attacks on Pearl Harbor and New York on 9/11.
The Signal and the NoiseThe Signal and the Noise offers readers Silver’s insights on Bayesian thinking. Actually the book applies Bayesian in all the books lessons.

He nudges us to remember this when applying predictions in our own professions. Actually Nate’s study of predictions affects just about everything we do in life.

The strongest lesson for me is about understanding data-driven models can lead to tragic outcomes. He warns us about noisy data and Big Data that can set off false readings with horrific consequences. This alone makes this book a pretty important read.

Silver’s chapter on baseball and references to Michael Lewis‘s bestseller

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Reading Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise

Wow just started reading The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t and see it carries the strong reputation as a though provoking book about prediction.
The Signal and the NoiseHe continues to look at data including out of sample data to provide greater context to long held assumptions to credit default swaps that strangled Wall Street and the housing bubble.

Even in defining why the US depression following the wall street collapse was worse than projected, his appeal of Too Big To Fail proves he has a good foundation from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s great book.

The second chapter of The Signal and the Noise focuses on pro baseball. Its another look at America’s game from a geek’s perspective. He acknowledges the impact of Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Lewis is a respected writer for all things wall street and metrics.

Now lets see how risk takers in Higher Education can improve a campus by understanding and absorbing these lessons….just pushing into chapter three.