Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagBaseball and luck

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Vintage baseball on a weathered American flag

The World Series of Coin Flips

Here we go again with the annual coin-flipping ritual known as the World Series
With the Yankees and Dodgers so evenly matched, this World Series will be somewhat like a coin-flipping contest. That's the paradox of luck and skill. Read More ›
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Chinese fortune cookies. Cookies with empty blank inside for prediction words. Blue background.

We Love Baseball Because of — Not Despite — Lady Luck

With a big game approaching, emotions run high so let’s heed some statistical realities

As we approach the MLB All-Star Game in Los Angeles on July 19, we can be confident of one thing — most current league leaders will not do as well after the break as they did before it. Baseball broadcaster and National Sportswriter of the Year Peter Gammons was among the first to notice this. He wrote in 1989 that, of those baseball players who hit more than 20 home runs before the All-Star break, 90 percent pegged fewer than 20 after the break. Gammons concluded that there was a “second-half power outage,” perhaps because the sluggers got nervous about the possibility of breaking a home run record. More recently, sports forecaster Max Kaplan made a similar observation, which he Read More ›