Preventing Linesman Syndrome

On John D. Cook's blog The Endeavour he writes about an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers that says that commercial airline crashes are more likely to happen when the more senior pilot is in charge. This seems counter-intuitive but it is because it is difficult for the person with less experience to point out someone more senior's error.

In commercial airlines, captains and first officers split the flying duties equally. But historically, crashes have been far more likely to happen when the captain is in the “flying seat.” At first this seems to make no sense, since the captain is almost always the pilot with the most experience. … Planes are safer when the least experienced pilot is flying, because it means the second pilot isn’t going to be afraid to speak up.

He gives an example of how German aerospace company DLR have leveraged this knowledge. They write software using pair programming where the junior programmer writes code and the senior programmer picks it apart.

What it made me think of is how referee's assistants* in soccer rarely got involved in soccer and how the the new officials behind the goal often don't. I think the addition of a fourth official, which would often be the most experienced referee may have helped in a way similar to the above to help referee's assistants get more involved.

* I had to google this. I really don't watch much soccer.

Reaching For The Moon

I think most people will remember this mixed metaphor:

Reach for the moon and even if you fail you will be among the stars.

I remember when Houllier quoted it as the moment I realised the shine had come off. But maybe there is some sense to it. What if it means that if you overreach you may be burned up - meaning you may fail more spectacularly than if you had never tried to succeed at all.

In the the 2005 French 2000 Guineas Shamardal was considered a lucky winner over David Wachman's Indesatchel. Many experts felt that that Shamardal, despite starting as favourite, had been flattered by his win. It was felt that those who raced up with the pace had an advantage and if Indesatchel had been one of those he could have won. The Racing post offered the following comment:

Even Shamardal´s most ardent supporters would have to spare a thought for Indesatchel, for whom this was a Classic that got away. In a race in which the draw was more than a little important, Jamie Spencer had no option from his wide berth but to bring the always held-up Greenham winner across to the inside rail. This he did, and though the Irish colt enjoyed a smooth passage, he also found himself having to make up acres of ground just toget to Shamardal. Having done so, he did not have quite enough energy left to go past. Much better at three than he was at two, he was the only horse among the first four to come from off the pace and can now be called a genuine Group 1 performer. 

A month later Shamardal followed up with a win in the French Derby in similar fashion over the future Arc-winner Hurricane Run. This led to the moneyball-type thinking that Shamardal would be under priced in the St. James' Palace. Indeed, most pundits were touting Indesatchel in the run up to the race - all he would have to do was prevent Shamardal from getting an easy lead.

It is likely that people saw a horse who had been fortunate to win two races and he was not likely to get lucky a third time. This would have been fair comment if the races had been against the similar horses over a similar distance. There were two things wrong with that analysis:

First is that if Shamardal had truly stolen the French 2000 Guineas then it would suggest that he would be better over shorter distances.Stepping up and winning over the longer distance showed that he would prefer a stronger pace over a mile.

Secondly, and I only noticed this when reviewing the races, by beating France's best 3-year-old milers and France's best 3-year-old middle-distance horse he had significantly reduced his odds of not having faced a very good horse. This form of one of the races was very likely to hold up. In this case it was the Derby and the 2000 Guineas turned out to be a very poor race.

So what happened?

Heat-Thunder and Knuckleballs

The art of the knuckleball, explained more fully in this Washington Post article, is to throw the ball so that it has at most one revolution before arriving at the batter. The lack of spin on the ball enables it to take advantage of turbulence. Because the turbulence will take the ball in a random direction, it makes the knuckleball a very effective pitch when executed successfully. What makes the knuckleball so difficult is that if you get more than one revolution then you are throwing a very easy pitch to hit - a slow, straight fastball (like cricket, movement is king).

To have a good expected value for the knuckleball then one must have a high expected frequency of throwing a knuckleball.

Back in 2010 Red-Sox flame thrower Daniel Bard, who was top five in average fast ball velocity, performed far better when following Knucleballer Tim Wakefield. This is because Wakefield threw a very slow knuckleball. The change in speed, going from the slowest pitch in MLB to one of the fastest, improved the efficacy of Bard's repertoire. Proof of how effective the change of speed is: the most valuable fastball in 2009 belonged to Tim Wakefield.

Just something to think of before game one of the NBA finals.