FanShot

Fangraphs piece on "Accepting Randomness"

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Great must-read, esp. for those who have a hard time getting certain SABR-ish findings to settle and live comfortably in their gut. I LOVE the super bowl coin flip example. The whole thing reminds me of a book I read by this guy who was the editor of "American Sceptic". His central point was that human beings are pattern-seeking, story-telling animals (largely for evolutionary reasons, esp. re: pattern-seeking) and hence come up with all sorts of wacky but "plausible", comforting and/or interesting/alluring explanations for not-readily explicable phenomena. This seems relevant to people who, for instance, can't believe pitchers don't control their BABIP Against to an overly significant degree. (EDIT: I mean, yes, they do control it to a STATISTICALLY "significant" degree, but not to NEARLY the extent many many people assume they do, and I meant "significant" colloquially.) Anyway, it's a good read.