That's really well stated. At first, he was a breath of fresh air. He became really stale because he stopped trying to be so statistics-based. However, his project of applying baseball-style sabermetrics to polling was also greatly damaged by the fact that polls are not hard numbers like bases on balls or the more sophisticated stats Sil…
That's really well stated. At first, he was a breath of fresh air. He became really stale because he stopped trying to be so statistics-based. However, his project of applying baseball-style sabermetrics to polling was also greatly damaged by the fact that polls are not hard numbers like bases on balls or the more sophisticated stats Silver created based on defensive range as well as fielding percentage, on base percentage plus ballpark adjusted slugging and so forth. Ultimately, no matter what corrective measures you may seek to apply to polls, they are still educated guesses, even when they are completely honest, and there is a constant risk of garbage in, garbage out.
As you note, garbage in garbage out put a shelf-life on him approach anyway, but he shortened that shelf life unnecessarily by abandoning what he was good at.
Although, polling isn't strictly dead in the water. I think 2022 polls were fairly accurate, weren't they? We could have had a nice model for that year if it was a proper focus.
That's really well stated. At first, he was a breath of fresh air. He became really stale because he stopped trying to be so statistics-based. However, his project of applying baseball-style sabermetrics to polling was also greatly damaged by the fact that polls are not hard numbers like bases on balls or the more sophisticated stats Silver created based on defensive range as well as fielding percentage, on base percentage plus ballpark adjusted slugging and so forth. Ultimately, no matter what corrective measures you may seek to apply to polls, they are still educated guesses, even when they are completely honest, and there is a constant risk of garbage in, garbage out.
As you note, garbage in garbage out put a shelf-life on him approach anyway, but he shortened that shelf life unnecessarily by abandoning what he was good at.
Although, polling isn't strictly dead in the water. I think 2022 polls were fairly accurate, weren't they? We could have had a nice model for that year if it was a proper focus.