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For the Love of the Analytics of the Game: Before Beane, There Was AVM Systems
theodp writes: Those of you slugging your way through EdX's (free) Sabermetrics 101: Introduction to Baseball Analytics MOOC course might want to take a break from your R and SQL coding to check out Grantland's Before Beane, in which Ben Lindbergh tells the story of AVM Systems, the little-known company that jump-started sabermetrics and made Moneyball possible. Ken Mauriello, whose love-for-the-analytics-of-the-game led him to ditch a trading career to co-found AVM in the mid-90's, said of the early days, "Back in the day we weren't doing presentations [to skeptical MLB teams] with laptops. We were carrying around two enormous boxes with an enormous monitor and an enormous tower. It was like Planes, Trains & Automobiles traveling around with that stuff. Watching a great big Gateway box with your monitor come tumbling out upside down, and you pick it up and it's rattling. ... So we're in the hotel, saying, 'Please lord, let this thing work.'"
Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.
http://techcitynews.com/2014/0...
Is there an alternative summary available where I might know what any of the nouns mean? In particular, why is it assumed that anyone knows who these companies or people are? I just about got "MLB" = "Major League Baseball".
In response to complaints about all these mysterious acronyms, EdX will host a second MOOC to explain MLB to those who have a background in R and SQL but not MLB. Topics covered include ERA, RBI, OBP, IP, and BB. See this page for a full list of course topics.
Baseball stat heads love their acronyms.
OPS - on base plus slugging percentage
WAR - wins above replacement
LOOGY - lefty one out guy
TINSTAAPP - there is no such thing as a pitching prospect
MARINERS - a backwards team being run as if it's still the 1960s
#DeleteChrome
How many times I've thought about it... what I was thinking about that caused me to think about it... p.s. you just lost.
(Prediction: this is going to be my most-downvoted post ever.)