In a review of the movie Moneyball, David Denby writes:
Lewis, Miller, and the screenwriters may have gone too far in their gleeful celebration of Beane and their denigration of scouts. Beane has never made it to the World Series (in 2002, the A’s were eliminated in the playoffs by the Minnesota Twins). Oakland has had a mediocre record for the past five years, and it’s finishing a lousy season this year. Success in baseball remains something of a mystery (though pots of money continue to help the Yankees and the Sox). Sabermetrics is a fascinating approach to winning, but it’s one of many approaches, not the ultimate answer. It can’t explain why some teams with the right stats catch fire and others fade. In the movie, the scouts say some dumb stuff, but they know that statistics, no matter how they’re broken down, can’t predict everything.
Denby generally likes the movie and is supportive of its message, so I shouldn’t really complain, but . . . the above passage is just silly. Nobody is saying that statistics can explain everything. In fact, Bill James wrote a lot about prediction error (for example, his so-called Plexiglass principle). Beyond this, the ideas of Moneyball are anything but a secret, so there’s no reason you’d think that Moneyball tactics would help the A’s after the ideas had been widely spread and accepted. I mean, really: Oakland is “finishing a lousy season this year” and that’s supposed to be evidence that sabermetrics isn’t all that?
P.S. The real question, I suppose, is why I read the review at all, given that (a) Denby is neither an insightful reviewer nor an interesting writer, and (b) I almost never go to the movies. I have no good answer to this one.
P.P.S. The real real question, I suppose, is why I bothered to blog this at all (beyond the usual explanation that I have a lot of things to procrastinate this week). As I’ve written before, you can learn a lot about a person by looking at what irritates him or her. Denby’s review irritates me for two reasons. First, as a statistician I don’t like to see statistics disparaged or overly hyped. (A little bit of hype is ok, but not too much!) Second, I hate hate hate that “humanistic” attitude in which people without scientific training try to justify their existence by going all mystical on us. It doesn’t have to be that way—John Updike, for example, was able to appreciate the mystery of life without disparaging science.
Denby retook an English class at Columbia a few years back and got a long New Yorker article out of it. In Googling to make sure, I find he also got a book out of it (“Great Books”). I remember being very irritated by that article, and boring my (English teacher) wife about it. Maybe Denby is just irritating.
I think some people who are not involved in the “analytics” business are missing the point. What set the As apart is the ability of the analysts to claim a seat at the table; it’s not that they have invented some new analytical tool.
As you point out, the idea that statistics can be used to analyze baseball problems is well known. Where “experts” who have “intuition” or “domain knowledge” are entrenched, it is very difficult for statisticians to gain a foothold. Lewis I thought did a great job portraying the political battle and how it was won. I haven’t seen the movie yet; I hope the scriptwriter(s) found inspiration in that part of the story!
“Second, I hate hate hate that “humanistic” attitude in which people without scientific training try to justify their existence by going all mystical on us.”
Me too. I hate variations of “It’s an art, not a science” or “it’s as much an art as a science” -especially when applied to things like medicine or management. I think a good case can be made that the only thing that’s an art is -art.
You should go see the movie. I’d like to hear your opinion. I think “Moneyball’s” screenwriters did quite close to the best job possible in making a large budget Hollywood movie about statistics, but I’d like to hear a statistician’s view.
I think your best bet is AT; I wouldn’t be surprised if he will see or have seen the movie, so maybe he can post a statistician’s view. I have a feeling he knows more about baseball than I do, too.
In addition to “it’s an art, not a science”, here are some more things people say when they don’t like the numbers:
“that’s an academic point of view”
“you know, we’ve been in this business for 20 years”
“I’m accountable for the profit/loss.” (and you aren’t)
“I’m a gambling kind of person”
“damned lies, and statistics”
“I don’t believe these numbers”