Publications

Steve Miller, Information Management Blogs, August 17, 2009

My daughter's a pretty good high school volleyball player. Her travel team has enjoyed a measure of success the last two years and so the players have now started to attract attention from college programs. My daughter was delighted with a letter she received a few months ago from one college in particular, a school she dreams about independent of volleyball. When she shared her interest with one of the parents at the end-of-season club party, the adult mildly scoffed, opining that the school's volleyball program was a loser and destined to remain one, citing a dismal 2008 season in which the team lost more than 70% of its games overall, 90% in conference. Concerned, I checked the school's recent record and found something much different: a 60% winning record in the six years prior to 2008. Even taking the last dismal year into account, the school's seven year performance had been competitive -- a middle of the pack team in a very tough conference.

... When I looked at the numbers for five years prior, however, the merit scholar difference disappeared. The parents' one year sample from the public school happened to be a random low-water mark.

The recurring theme of Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk, How Randomness Rules Our Lives, first mentioned in Part I, is that the general population isn't innately proficient with probability and statistics, consistently making predictable mistakes in their internal calculations of likelihoods, patterns and measurement error.

http://www.information-management.com/blogs/business_intelligence_bi-10015926-1.html