Mon: Discussion with Sander Greenland on posterior predictive checks
Tues: Understanding the hot hand, and the myth of the hot hand, and the myth of the myth of the hot hand, and the myth of the myth of the myth of the hot hand, all at the same time
Wed: Updike and O’Hara
Thurs: Luck vs. skill in poker
Fri: If you do an experiment with 700,000 participants, you’ll (a) have no problem with statistical significance, (b) get to call it “massive-scale,” (c) get a chance to publish it in a tabloid top journal. Cool!
Sat, Sun: As Chris Hedges would say: You’re gonna need a bigger boat
Updike’s career is well-suited for Bill James type analysis of career arcs and peak age. He appeared to peak at age 49 with Rabbit Is Rich, and then declined steadily afterwards. Updike was extremely aware of the decline of his powers and took it with good grace, wit, and a bit of unseemly glee that seemed to drive critics like James Wood bonkers with rage.
Steve:
I tried to read “Roger’s Version” once—I’d somehow gotten the impression that it was one of Updike’s better books from his later period—but i found it clunky and nearly unreadable. Maybe I just didn’t give it a chance, though. I also found Dashiell Hammett hard to read at first but after a few pages I got into the rhythm.
Wodehouse’s Bertie and Jeeves novels are quite amenable to career arc analyses because he wrote so many over so many decades.