i read chuck klosterman x so you don't have to

Chuck Klosterman X by Chuck Klosterman (June 2017)

Klosterman's tenth book is a collection of articles and essays published over the past decade. Longtime fans will recognize 'X' as an updated version of Chuck Klosterman IV (minus the novella) (1).

The article I enjoyed the most was about Royce White. His promising NBA playing career never quite got going. A 2012 first round draft choice of the Houston Rockets, White's battle with general anxiety disorder proved too difficult to maintain while trying to establish an NBA career. He used his platform as a well-known athlete, however, to become an advocate and humanitarian for mental health issues and awareness.

One thing the article points out is perhaps obvious yet rarely discussed (or possibly willfully ignored): professional sports teams having their own doctors is a conflict of interest. If a business always seeks to cut overhead and sports teams are businesses (as commentators and pundits love to remind fans), then logically the team doctor is incentivized to return injured players to action as early as possible. The result might hamper the player's physical or mental capacities decades later, of course, but this is a problem the team does not need to deal with and therefore can usually ignore.

I also liked Klosterman's insight into confirmation bias. He recounts being chosen to write about the AMC series The Walking Dead, a show he did not watch. Apparently, this made him uniquely qualified to provide a new perspective on the show, or so his boss thought. This is a fair justification. Who else could make an interesting insight into a show he did not watch?

But if Klosterman did watch the show, surely his dedicated viewing habits would also make him an ideal candidate for the piece. Who could know more about the show?

Once someone decided he was the man to write about the show, his relationship to it became irrelevant. The thought reminded me of learning to write. Most writing assignments in school involved defining a position and defending it through reasoned arguments. The hallowed 'five-paragraph essay' organized this principle into an easy enough recipe for us students to follow. What I failed to recognize back then was how many of my examples could be used were I to have written an opposing piece. I think all I would have needed to do was tweak my word choice a little bit to make sure it flowed properly.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. All published already?

For rabid fans, I suppose this book is possibly a disappointment. There is very little new material here.

the ricky rubio index

Halfway into writing last week's post about Ricky Rubio, I thought I could make a crude but entertaining ranking of NBA players based on how high the Rubio article comes among the Google search results for '(player last name) + worst shooter ever'. (1)

Here were my results:

Kendrick Perkins: 5
Rajon Rondo: 7
Zach Randolph: 2
Ron Artest/Metta World Peace: 6 (both times, which was impressive)

So far, so good. But what if the small sample size was misleading me? I thought about how Google searches worked and tested some counter-examples.

Kevin Garnett: 1
Steph Curry: 6
Klay Thompson: 2
Reggie Miller: 1
Ray Allen: 6

My hypothesis was falling apart. I guess there was only one thing left to check.

Ricky Rubio: 1

Well, at least the baseline case went smoothly. But despite my minor success, I decided to scrap the concept.

This exercise is probably a decent enough introduction to show how Google works. Intuition suggests these results all differ by the one term I changed with each search (the player's last name). But focusing on what is changing is a common reasoning error. Google does not consider changes to a user's most recent search. Rather, it just looks at each search on its own terms (!) and brings up the best links.

Kevin Garnett's 'Rubio Score' being one is unrelated to his ability. His score is one because he is shown in the article strangling/caressing Rubio's neck. (What a great guy!)

This process reminded me of Michael Lewis's discussion of confirmation bias in The Undoing Project. Confirmation bias means shaping evidence to support a conclusion. It starts by forming an opinion or conclusion prior to gathering evidence. Once evidence collection begins, a biased judge will fit the evidence to support the conclusion. On the other hand, an unbiased judge would use the evidence to lead to a conclusion.

In the case of The Six Degrees of Rubio, it would have been very easy for me to run several hundred Google searches using bad shooters. I could have collected as many examples of a 'one' score as I wanted and presented my findings to my reader(s). If I made a pie chart or a PowerPoint slide showing these results, the findings would appear even more impressive (and thus would have to be True).

But they would have proved nothing. The way to disprove my idea was in the second example. By running examples using great shooters, I showed how the name mattered little in the search and disproved my hypothesis.

The exercise makes me wonder about the best approach to battle confirmation bias. The usual presentation of the phenomenon makes forming an initial conclusion appear like the main issue. With a conclusion in hand, the bias is described as almost inevitable.

I'm sure remaining entirely judgment free in this first stage is one way to avoid falling victim to the bias. But this strikes me as a difficult task. I almost always form a first impression when meeting someone new and I tend to rely on gut instinct to gauge if a given statement 'seems' true when I first hear it.

A more sensible approach considering my natural and nearly unavoidable tendency to have a gut reaction might be to seek out evidence unquestionably disproving the initial conclusion. It is not a big problem if I assume someone is my height because our eye levels are the same when seated. The issue is when I still think so after we both stand up and I realize the top of the other person's head lines up with my rib cage. The key is to find ways to stand up, so to speak, and look at the evidence from many angles.

In the case of my Rubio Index, I tried using some great shooters as test cases. Kevin Durant was a promising first but he scored a 10+ (he's a reliable double-digit scorer, I suppose). But this trend did not hold. When Reggie Miller scored a one on my 'Rubio Index', my hypothesis was in trouble.

I was at a crossroads, I suppose. I could continue tweaking my 'model' and find better search terms to use. Or I could move on to something more productive (though what could be more productive than this...).

I opted for the latter and finished reading The Undoing Project. I'll write a little more about this book soon.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Tim
Head Writer, TOA
Boston, MA
Rubio Score: 10+

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. Like I said, I was drunk and it was snowing and every flake is unique...

The concept vaguely resembles the 'six degrees of separation' idea, I guess, but I really have no idea how all this got started. Is the question of how close each NBA player comes to showing up alongside the Rubio article an important one? I'm sure I thought this exercise would tell me something at the time.

so, what do you do?

Back in the summer, I referenced one of Devra Lee Fishman's Hospice Girl Friday columns, 'The Loner', where Fishman describes her inner world as she responded to a request from her volunteer supervisor. Though she was initially unsure about offering to help, she chose to step forward when she recognized her hesitation was only an excuse for not thinking about her own (not quite imminent) death.

About two-thirds of the way into the article, she realizes her internal world was stealthily influencing her feelings toward her volunteer responsibilities. Once acknowledged, she resolved to address her concerns about 'her own end-of-life scenario'. Her decision freed her energy to fully serve the residents of the hospice. The final third of the article in particular prompted me to consider how my own internal hurdles impacted my service during my first year as a hospice volunteer.

I think the biggest one tied back to my own initial experiences visiting my mom while she was a hospice resident. I remember the first thing I noticed about the hospice was its peacefulness. It contrasted to her previous room in a major Boston hospital. At the hospital, busyness was the word. Nurses and doctors came in and out of her room at all hours to check in. Unpredictable beeping at varying decibel levels left no silence unbroken. The hospital staff was accommodating at all times but no amount of kindness there could change a simple reality: the requirements of a major hospital room made simple visitation a difficult proposition.

By contrast, the hospice seemed designed for visiting. This was a major improvement! But I was not the only one who noticed. As a result, my mom had a lot more visitors as a hospice resident than she did as a hospital patient.

On some days, she spent the time I visited just resting or sleeping, no doubt partly recovering from earlier conversations and visits. Though I understood the importance of having others stop in when I was not there and was grateful for all the extra support from her friends, colleagues, and hospice staff, I could not help feeling rejected during the times when she slept through my visits.

It took me a few weeks of volunteering before I recognized how this memory influenced my service to the hospice. I noticed my behavior during home visits (when I went to see people choosing to remain at home while on hospice care) contrasted with how I approached my weekly shifts at the residence facility. During home visits, I was open, warm, and engaged. My shyness and introversion which sometimes made me anxious or uncomfortable around new people was gone. On these visits, I served the organization as the best version of myself and engaged with patients, their families, and their caregivers in ways I am proud of.

My shifts at the residence, however, brought back old habits and patterns limiting my full potential to serve the organization. The best version of myself, so easily accessible on home visits, was locked just beyond my reach whenever I stepped through the front door of the hospice. The courage I relied on to accept and share the burden of suffering during my home visits was replaced with the familiar hesitancy I loathed about myself. Rather than naturally serving as a comforting presence within the house, I second-guessed my decisions and worried about what others thought. At the worst times, I felt like a lingering guest: encouraged to stay yet obviously excess to requirements.

The difference in how I approached the two types of volunteer shifts baffled me at first. I did not understand why I regressed during my residence shifts. There were lots of possibilities. Perhaps I was simply not ready to return to a hospice so soon after my own loss.

The first suggestion about what was going on with my residence shifts came during a home visit. I started spending an hour or so a week with a man who did not appear to benefit at all from my presence. We often watched TV shows together in his native language (let's just say it wasn't English or Japanese). Some days, he was in a great deal of pain and could not communicate very well. On other days, he simply chose not to communicate. Our short, infrequent conversations often explored the exact purpose of a hospice volunteer- so, what do you do?- and I consistently failed to come up with a satisfactory answer.

There was no ill-intent in this question. The point of a volunteer was simply not clear to this man. I understood his point of view completely. It wasn't very clear to me, either.

Despite this open question, I was happy to visit each week. I learned more about a country I had never seen and developed a good rapport with the caregiver. His family stopped by on occasion and it was a pleasure to put faces to photos as I met the important people in this man's life I'd (occasionally) heard about (2). Despite our shared difficulty in pinpointing the exact benefit of my presence, I was always encouraged to return the following week each time my visit concluded and greeted warmly each time I returned.

I realized one day how crucial my internal state was during this particular experience. Though it was not evident why I was there or exactly clear what I was supposed to be doing, since I had been asked to be there I felt I was in the right place. It was easy to show up for my weekly visit and simply be there even if the benefit of my presence was not obvious to me or the patient. To put it bluntly, the question of how my presence helped just wasn't my problem and I gave the matter very little thought.

I did not have this easy sense of belonging at the hospice residence. Each visit with a resident brought to mind my own self-doubt about whether it was appropriate to use up the little time someone had left talking with me. How would I feel if I came to visit only for my friend or loved one to sleep through it thanks to a volunteer's insistence on conversation earlier in the day? I knew.

But I also had plenty of shifts at the residence where I did feel perfectly comfortable with the residents. These visits almost always followed a direct request from the staff or from a resident's family. As I felt during my home visits, I was at ease knowing my presence was wanted. (3)

The recognition of how my own experiences influenced my volunteering was a sort of breakthrough for me. I started to adjust my approach at the residence. A helpful change was to focus on gathering more information. I spoke with the nurses or aides about the resident's schedule. If the person was expecting visitors later on, I kept my interactions brief or made sure to ask if my company was wanted. A resident waking up after a long nap was a good candidate for my visit, I learned, while someone struggling to sleep through the night might benefit from being left alone during a rare period of rest.

The most important change was to ask directly. The best person to ask about whether a given resident was expecting visitors was always the resident in question. Based on the response, I could tailor the rest of my interaction. Though a small adjustment, I feel the results have been significant and I now try to pass the information along to volunteers coming in after me whenever possible.

The entire process summarizes a larger lesson from my first year volunteering. Big transformations always start by acknowledging the small stirrings within. Though it is possible to serve effectively while harboring internal conflict, the surest path to my best self requires acknowledging my own feelings and addressing these in healthy ways. To find and unlock the best qualities I sometimes lose sight of requires I first become my own judge. When no one else, after all, can know what I'm missing out on, using another's perceptions or judgments doesn't do me much good.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. Just say no always works, right?

Initially, the piece left me confused. Why not just say no? I'd said no plenty of times as a volunteer. Sometimes, I did so in situations very similar situations to the one Fishman described. It was an important idea stressed during training- 'you can always say no', we new volunteers were reminded time and again. The consequences for saying no were nil as a volunteer (and not just because of the technical details regarding the at-will nature of being a volunteer).

Outside of logistical concerns, saying yes to all requests might actually harm the patient. If I responded to a request inappropriate for me, I might create a negative experience for the hospice residents and their families. As a volunteer, my role is to serve the hospice organization to the best of my ability. The day I can no longer effectively serve will be the day I walk away from my volunteer role. Saying yes to requests beyond my ability will only push me closer to this end.

Like all gut reactions, though, my initial firm response- why not just say no?- softened with time. In considering different perspectives, the possibility of my training being different from her training occurred to me (duh). Unlike me, Fishman may not have been encouraged to turn down requests and thus did not consider the response as a possibility. I also wondered if perhaps the article was incomplete (an often necessary consideration when writing about the details of hospice work). It was a short piece and perhaps I was making assumptions to fill in blanks, answer questions, or account for back story.

I suspected Fishman was a stoic sort of person, perhaps the type who could volunteer at the hospice without allowing her internal struggles to impact her service. But this was again another guess on my part. Eventually, I recognized her individuality and acknowledged my confusion was a result of my assumptions.

2. Here's a snippet from one of my favorite conversations...

Me: Hey, Mr. ___, nice Christmas tree.

Mr. ___: Oh, my daughter put it up. She is crazy.

3. I wonder who will be my last friend?

I remember during training the volunteer coordinator said one way to think about being a volunteer was to consider yourself the last friend a person could make. I (maturely) responded by laughing out loud.

It wasn't the ideal response, I admit, but the thought of me walking through a door and announcing "Hey, I'm the last friend you'll ever make" struck me as darkly comedic. I'm surprised more of my visits don't start with a patient pretending to fall asleep.

duck 1, dog 0

I witnessed a pretty impressive sight on a June Sunday. As I walked beside one of the small ponds alongside the Charles River, a mother duck and her little ducklings floated on past me. The family caught the attention of a passing dog, as well, straining against the leash being held by her owner.

The dog came off the leash and immediately jumped into the water. The splash was met by immediate action from the ducks. As the ducklings paddled directly across to the other bank, the mother duck started flapping and quacking wildly, darting left and right in front of the bewildered dog. After a number of semi-circle arcs, the dog turned and walked back up onto dry land, tail tucked neatly between her legs, and sought the safety of the leash.

reading review: hillbilly elegy, part two

Hi all,

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance's account of his experiences growing up in a small Appalachian town. Towards the end of the book, the author makes a brief comment on payday lending which I want to expand on and explore in more detail today.

First, the context for his comment. After explaining why well-meaning lawmakers wish to tighten up regulations for these lenders, Vance shares a personal example demonstrating how he used a payday lender to cover unanticipated expenses (1). Broadly speaking, these lenders exist so those in the community are able to smooth out cash flow variations on short notice.

I liked his explanation. It highlighted a common problem when aggregated observations are broken into 'per-capita' metrics in the name of 'describing' individuals (a problem I've been thinking quite a bit about lately).

In this particular example, a policymaker probably looked at payday lending in the aggregate and saw the interest rates charged by payday lenders were many multiples higher than interest rates from nearby banks. I imagine the resulting conversation went something like this:

Scene: Three POLICYMAKERS are seated around a table.

Policymaker #1: Interest rates are almost 400%! What to do now?

Policymaker #2: Stand up for the little guy, obviously.

Policymaker #1: Yes! This is why we got into politics!

Policymaker #3: Maybe a little slice for us, too, while we are at it?

Policymaker #1: Sure, why not? We worked all morning!

Policymaker #2: Let's vote for a pay increase in the next house session.

(High fives are exchanged all around.)

(Exeunt POLICYMAKERS left.) 

The problem here is not in the intent or even in the execution. The problem is just relying too much on math to excuse one-dimensional thinking. The aggregate metric was created by adding up the details of loan terms without considering the circumstances under which the loans were taken out. My hunch- let's call it my null hypothesis- is that people accept the best loan terms they can get. (Put another way, I don't hear too many stories about borrowers demanding higher interest rates from their banks.)

So, the policymaker might get more accomplished by questioning why the best possible loan at the time it was taken out was available at a payday lender rather than one of those banks it is being compared against. Jumping to regulate payday lenders without asking these questions will force some borrowers to the next lender on the chain. For some reason, I suspect this hypothetical 'next lender' will offer worse terms than the payday lender.

One thing I learned while researching payday lending for this little post was how payday lenders tend to serve specific demographics. In terms of annual income, a study by The Pew Charitable Trusts found those earning below $40,000 annually were one of five groups with greater odds of using a payday lender. However, I did not find many stories about payday lenders turning away people who earn more than $40,000.

My first crack at explaining these findings: borrowers above this $40,000 annual income threshold are finding better terms elsewhere. But let's put it more directly, shall we? (If anything, a blunter explanation will make for a more explosive blog post.) An alternate explanation is that banks are failing to serve lower income groups despite miraculously figuring out a way to serve higher income groups. (2)

Reading about payday lending reminded me of debates about health insurance. One way to lower health insurance premiums is to enroll healthier people in a plan. The thinking is healthier people tend to use fewer healthcare resources which means health insurance companies reimburse providers less for healthier members. But reverse the logic and...premiums can also go down if the least healthy people are removed from the plan! So if a health plan suddenly offers 'lower premiums', the savings came from either enrolling healthier members into the plan or by removing the sickest people from the insurance pool.

I see similarities to how banks might improve lending terms. If a bank serves only the most credit-worthy, the loans they offer will have lower interest rates. This attracts people with larger sums of money (let's call them the rich, or even The Rich) who have enough money to worry about things like the hundredths place. A bank seeking to attract these customers can lower interest rates in one of two ways: offer loans to more credit-worthy people or remove the least credit-worthy people from their books.

In a sense, a bank failing to service everyone who needs a loan ends up offering artificially low interest rates in the same way a health plan who refuses to enroll the unhealthy ends up offering artificially low premiums. Is this really a big deal? Well, I'm just old enough to remember who picked up the tab the last time the banks mucked this all up, so I say yes (3).

But despite some of my assured ranting above, I do not know all that much about payday lending. And I'm not here to ruin your Sunday. I'll leave it with a simple conclusion: the mere existence of payday lenders confirms for me the existence of a large enough group of borrowers who, for one reason or another, cannot borrow from banks at the very rates certain policymakers compare the payday lending rates to.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

0. Granted, this post script will ignore the impact of regulation, but who came here for my thoughts on regulation? Am I right?

It is possible banks refuse to lend to low income borrowers simply because lending to low income borrowers is bad for business. Research results suggest this is not the case, however, so I suspect the issue is more of banks systemically being unable to properly determine the risk of a loan.

Theoretically, a good bank will figure out the right interest rate for any borrower. So if a bank resorts to using a lazy proxy variable for determining credit worthiness, I start to worry about the bank's skill in evaluating a borrower's credit worth.

If this conclusion is on the right track, it is no wonder the banking system struggles to accurately price investments. It comes back to this payday lending question in a certain way. Instead of doing the hard work every hour to best serve all members of the community, banks devise ways to serve the customers who offer only the safest returns. A bank unable to figure out how to lend to everybody is as useful as a doctor who only sees perfectly healthy patients. When the time comes to truly understand a novel investment vehicle, banks fail not because of incompetence but due to a simple lack of practice.

1. How to lie with an interest rate 101

Vance's example uses a short-term cash emergency to highlight how a charge from a payday lender often beats a bank's overdraft fee. Based on my own experience, I agree with him.

So, instead of paying the overdraft fee, the borrower goes to a payday lender. The terms are $100 today with a minimum of $15 due every two weeks until the loan is repaid. If the overdraft fee exceeds $15, this looks OK on paper.

But, what is the interest rate on the loan? Let's use the above example.

Is the interest rate:

a) 15%
b) 391%
c) 3733%
d) All of the above
e) Uhh.....

(The answer is basically irrelevant because it comes down to how the loan is repaid. I personally like 'd' though I recommend choosing 'e' if ever asked in person because people who pose such questions out of the blue are usually more interested in explaining the math than they are in hearing your answer, but anyway...)

Here is a breakdown of the various ways the interest rate on such a loan is reported:

1) 15%

$15 fee on $100 principal is a ratio of 15/100 = 0.15.

2) 391%

This assumes you carry the $100 loan for a year and pay $15 every 14 days: 0.15 x (365.25/14) = 3.91.

3) 3733%

This assumes you take out a new loan every 14 days that will cover your principal and "charge", and every new loan is taken at same 15% "charge" of the amount borrowed: (1 + 0.15)365.25/14 − 1 = 37.33.

I borrowed those calculations from footnote number six in this Wikipedia entry about payday loans.

2. Policy Spit-balling 101

Maybe a policymaker could penalize banks with a set proportion of account holders reporting income or assets above a certain threshold? Or, perhaps banks could be required to maintain a proportion of their customers at or below the $40,000 annual income level?

Or perhaps an individual mandate is needed requiring anyone borrowing at a payday lender to show proof of a checking or savings account at a bank?

Hmmm...

3. To answer with the extended analogy...

Let's just say healthy people are not forced to give up their spare kidneys anytime someone goes on dialysis.

leftovers: i read the sun also rises so you don't have to

Just a hunch: I think some of Hemingway's characters are closet alcoholics.

i read the sun also rises so you don't have to

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (June 2017)

I picked up this book after a reader compared Eureka Street to this classic about the Lost Generation. I read The Sun Also Rises once before, perhaps in junior year of high school, but I discovered I had retained little from the experience. Thus, my reading it in June was in many ways like reading a brand new book.

Back in high school, The Big Idea was to read a book and write about the symbolism, literary devices, or general meaning found in the writing. Longtime readers of the blog will understand why I was fairly good at this. I probably wrote something about Brett Ashley's hair or remarked on the significance of Jake appreciating Romero's bullfighting technique. (1)

But in looking back, what was the point? I suspect the K-12 approach to literature focused too much on letters, words, and phrasing at the cost of cultivating a desire to read in students. For over-matched students, I imagine the approach turned reading into an activity akin to a word search: try and find the relevant similes contained within the larger incomprehensible mass! (2)

The crux of the issue is how reading and writing are taught together. Why? When I arrived at college, I was surprised when math turned out to essentially be a writing class. This did not need to be the case, either. High school math could easily have included writing. Other subjects like history incorporated writing, sort of, but it was more a way to organize memorized facts than it was an opportunity to write. Maybe the important question is to ask why any subject is allowed to ignore writing.

It was important to read books like The Great Gatsby, Fahrenhite 451, and The Sun Also Rises before I left high school (3). But it was important in the way watching the NBA helps a young basketball player. The benefit is in exposure, not imitation. Becoming a better basketball player means finding the right level of competition, not prematurely replicating the dunking, long range shooting, or social media activity seen at the NBA level.

Nothing cuts skill development short like discouragement. In the same way a young athlete always on the losing side becomes disinterested in the sport, a young writer forced to write assertively about topics poorly understood will lose interest in the form of expression. Why write when writing appears the fastest way to saying something dumb? (And in print, no less!)

Young writers would learn better by describing in-depth what they fully understand. Groping desperately for meaning within what is considered important literature makes this goal more difficult to reach. If such a task is accomplished only by assigning essays about The Hunger Games, so be it (4). It would be easier to do such a thing if writing and reading were taught separately.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. One more symbol...

I also remember my English teacher was sort of obsessed about Jake 'losing his manhood'. So maybe I played to this fascination by mentioning the scene when the bulls and the steer come together and the narrator points out how the pack functioned without issues until an animal became separated from the rest.

2. I actually wrote about this book on the SAT writing section.

I bet I would have been better off describing my contrarian views about Professor Snape in the Harry Potter series (at least in terms of developing my writing skills).

3. Ser o no ser, esta es la pregunta...

Even Shakespeare's indecipherable verses were valuable to some degree, perhaps so in the same way Spanish was. After all, the great playwright's version of English was basically a foreign language to everyone I knew, my teachers included.

4. Do dystopian novels ever fail?

Plus, who really knows what will be considered classic literature a hundred years from now? It could just as well be The Hunger Games, anyway.

is ricky rubio a good shooter or good at shooting?

I was browsing NBA statistics in the spring when I stumbled across a surprise in the free throw percentage leaders: just breaking into the top ten, ahead of superstars known for their superior shooting ability like Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and James Harden, was Ricky Rubio.

It was April 1 and the discovery smacked of an April Fool's Joke. I was also drinking quite a bit (drinking and blogging, sometimes simultaneously, are the only two things I do during snowstorms which, yes, we had on April 1 and no, not a joke). But I checked the numbers again during proofreading and there he was, still way high on up there in the rankings.

Why was this a surprise to me? Alcohol, duh. Last season, Rubio made some major headlines for becoming 'the worst shooter in modern NBA history' (sort of). (1)

And yet, the numbers never lie. Well, OK, maybe the numbers do lie, sometimes, but on the continuum of numbers to accept at face value, free-throw percentage is way over on the 'most truthful' end. This is because the free throw is basketball's only dead-ball play. Therefore, the free throw cleanly measures every player's performance at a specific skill without influence from unrelated factors lying beyond a player's control.

Another way to put it is if a player finishes the season as the top percentage free throw shooter in the league, it's not because the coach ran plays for him, his teammates created easy shots for him, or his opponents never guarded him with their best players. It is because during the eighty-two game NBA season, he was the best free throw shooter.

So, seeing Rubio's name in the top ten was a major shock. The article I linked to above is not the only evidence. I actually went on Google and found that, if I searched the names of other notoriously poor shooters along with the phrase 'worst shooter ever', the same article about Rubio kept landing in the first page of results. It was as if Google was clearing its throat each time I tried a new player- 'we know Rajon Rondo misses shots here and there and that DeAndre Jordan is no example for the little kids when it comes to the jump shot but...since you were talking WORST EVER...you meant Rubio, right?' Well, then.

It took me a short while to overcome my initial reaction and give the situation some thought. Rubio, it seemed, was a classic fit for one of my better theories about basketball: some players were good shooters, others were good at shooting.

The premise of my argument is straightforward. Some players practiced to hit any shot which might come up during a game. Usually, these players boast superior technique and their shooting form ends up looking similar to past great shooters.

Others practice to hit shots they expect to come up in a game. These players tend to train through volume and repetition. If a great shooter has unique shooting form, the player is surely in this group. I include here players who shoot much better from specific places on the floor as well.

I think the distinction is subtle but important. The idea is similar to how some students are considered 'book smart' yet lack common sense or how some musicians are great at playing from sheet music but unable to improvise. It's evident in any field where the accepted 'best way' to do something is no guarantee of the best in the field doing it the same way. Perhaps nothing summarizes the concept better than the old adage of 'do as I say, not as I do' (2).

The tricky part is in assessing how this relates to outcomes. To a complete outsider, the distinction between 'great shooter' and 'great at shooting' is impossible to make. A person who hits almost all their free throws looks like a good shooter in the same way someone who can rattle off the names of all the US presidents in alphabetical order sounds intelligent. Though the performance implies something, it is very difficult to know for sure from the example alone if the basketball player is capable of hitting other kinds of shots (or if the hypothetical student knows anything else about US history).

In some situations, the difference becomes apparent over time. Rubio, faced with many different types of shooting situations over his multi-year career, is not a great shooter. But he is obviously great at shooting free throws. He may be relying too much on mere repetition (by practicing from just the foul line) and not doing enough to develop his underlying shooting skill (by not practicing from everywhere else). The results are akin to the student who opts for rote memorization at the cost of cultivating an intuitive understanding of the subject.

Of course, the person who knows the difference best is the individual in question. And by knowing the difference, the solution derives itself. That's why I'm puzzled when people who are good in one area struggle in another. If my desk at the office was perfectly neat but my desk at home was a disorganized mess, I would think about what I did to keep organized at work and apply it to life at home.

So Ricky, come on! I know you can be a good shooter, at least, based on your free throws. But more importantly, surely YOU know you can be a good shooter based on your free throws. Whatever you did to get better at free throws, you can do to get better everywhere else. Maybe you practice more repetitions from other shooting spots like I bet your colleagues with highly defined hot/cold zones do. Or perhaps you tailor your free throw practice to emphasize broader shooting fundamentals rather than focusing on free throw specific elements.

One last bit of advice: don't let Google fool you. You probably aren't the worst shooter in NBA history, modern or otherwise. But if the search results this many years into your career are this bad, maybe it is a good time to think a little differently about your process.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. The 'worst shooter in modern NBA history' sounds ridiculous...

I will warn the interested reader that this conclusion was reached after applying a series of somewhat over-specified assumptions, the shakiest being that Rubio would stop playing at the very instant the article was published to lock in his place at the bottom of NBA history (do we talk about who was leading at halftime of championship games? We do not, correct?).

But all that aside, to be the subject of such a discussion implies that he is, at the very minimum, not a good shooter.

One thing I like about the article is the title. It gets right to the point- 'Ricky Rubio is the worst shooter in modern NBA history'. Nothing wishy-washy from our friends over at The Star Tribune!

2. When it comes to lupus, I just know it when I see it...

A lot of the TV shows I used to watch incorporated this idea. House is the best example. In one episode, Dr. House and LL Cool J traded whiskey shots until the medical maverick solved some trivial mystery. I'll assume this move is not taught by the elite medical schools.

Perhaps the key to getting on TV is in writing a pilot drawing from the 'do as I say, not as I do' concept.

is the 200 meter butterfly really not much different from an empty pool?

Among the many ridiculous Chuck Klosterman quotes I remember (for whatever reason, honestly, I have no idea why I remember these useless remarks) came from an appearance on Bill Simmons's podcast. Taped during a recent Olympics, Chuck remarked on the show that he didn't like swimming events because watching a race in a pool was not much different from just looking at an empty pool.

MayFair, a Harvard Square festival, held its 34th annual event on the first Sunday of May. As I watched people bump into standing objects, search for the perfect overpriced food item, or stop to examine some useless trinket, I realized something: the streets might have been blocked off but it was still basically like any other weekend afternoon stroll through Harvard Square.

life changing books, 2013: hire like you just beat cancer

Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer by Jim Roddy (Summer 2013)

This quick, highly useful read is filled with various nuggets about how to get the most out of your firm's recruiting. Though it is targeted at hiring managers, I think it will help those involved at any level of the hiring process. (1)

The big idea I drew from this book addressed the design of interview questions. The best questions bring out the truth quickly. They force candidates to describe what happened in the past and allow them an opportunity to describe their role in the event. At the end of the answer, the why and the how of the candidate's role must be clear. Otherwise, what was the point of the question?

A poorly designed question does not invite the truth. It leaves no invitation to describe how and no opportunity to explain why.  Instead, the question leads the conversation toward hypotheticals, speculation, or promise-making. Most bad questions have some element of the hypothetical and any such question must be disregarded immediately. There is simply no valuable information within an answer to such a question because anyone can come into an interview and claim anything.

After I read this book, I tried to craft interview questions to bring out the facts from job candidates. But an overly designed question will not always draw out the best answers and there is no reward for highlighting our own genius by crafting a clever question for a candidate. Usually, the best questions simply dig into unclear answers or ask for further explanation of an impressive resume item.

One up: The book advocates a common sense approach for crafting good questions. To know why something happened, ask 'why did this happen'. If the original answer is unclear, follow up with phrases such as 'can you help me understand...' or 'can you describe in more detail...'. These phrases help keep candidates on the same train of thought without forcing them to wonder if they gave a bad answer.

Simple follow ups such as 'can you provide an example of that?' or 'can you describe a time where you did what you just claimed?' are also very important questions. These are the tools needed to turn answers drifting toward the hypothetical back to the facts about the candidate.

The 'common sense' approach is what I liked most about the book. It extended beyond just forming questions. If a hiring team is unsure about a candidate, the book suggests scheduling another interview. Duh, right? It seems simple enough on the surface. But in practice, many hiring managers prefer to stick to some vague notion of 'a process' (or even worse, The Process) at the cost of hiring some idiot an extra round of interviews would have weeded out.

One down: This book made an effort to remove specifics about the author's area of expertise (hiring for a sales team) but I think there was just a little too much unnecessary detail presented here to make the book a general guide for all hiring teams. A careful reader should focus on the basics to get the most out of this read.

If you want to take candidates and their spouses out to dinner, though, by all means, go right ahead!

Just saying: The goal of a strong hiring process is to gather all the facts needed to make the correct hire. Failure to do so means utilizing less reliable techniques such as speculation, interpretation, or extrapolation to assess potential hires. It also increases the likelihood of hidden biases or fluke factors influencing a final decision. (2)

Now, one thing this book harps on is understanding why hiring teams do any of the things they do. Such rigorous thinking ensures each step adds value to the hiring process.

I think it's important to apply the same general concept to the book. So, why is it important for hiring managers to read a book about having a strong hiring process? (3)

One reason is because the hiring process is the first time an organization reveals its ability to assess and understand the performance of its employees. It happens somewhat indirectly through defining open roles. The more an organization understands what makes its top performers successful, the better its criteria for open positions will be. Most of the time, the job posting will look a lot like a description of those who've succeeded in the past.

But an organization struggling to apply the lessons of its performance evaluations will not handle this step very well. Such firms are almost sure to end up in trouble after a few rounds of hiring. Good employees will notice how strong performers are not being acknowledged and suspect a performance-based culture is slowly giving in to the pressure of politics. (4)

A poorly run hiring process runs the risk of reinforcing the importance of appearance over contribution. It invites posturing and promises while dismissing performance and delivery. If no one in an organization can figure out why someone was hired, the logical conclusion is to suspect leaders are unable to assess performance. If the pattern continues, new hires will systematically be unable to challenge push their colleagues to reach new heights. For many talented people, such environments become intellectually stale and might lead them to take their talents to South Beach consider new options for their career.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

0. This is the second straight 'life changing' book post failing to address why the book was life changing!

Yes, I'm getting lazy with the concept lately.

This book just changed my approach to hiring. Until I read it, I just assumed the process should work more or less like I saw it work anywhere else. Once I started questioning some of my basic assumptions about running a hiring process, I noticed I started questioning other assumptions with (sometimes alarming) regularity.

1. Cute title.

When it comes to book titles, Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer is a tricky one to assess. Broadly speaking, it is a relevant idea because the author has just beaten cancer and is using those lessons to hire better. But I'm not going to say I think beating cancer automatically makes anyone better at hiring. It just worked for him and so his book's title reflects the fact.

My mom was sick with cancer when I picked this book out. Coincidence? I suppose it could have been.

But there are people paid awfully large salaries to understand how I scan and process titles who might argue otherwise.

2. I always ask for a 1pm interview...

My favorite one described the effect of interview timing. One study I read about reported a link between hunger levels of interviewers and their perception of interviewees. A hungry interviewer tended to view candidates with a more skeptical eye while those just returning from lunch seemed to rate the same candidates more highly.

3. Because, like, you want good people??

It's not as self-evident as you might think. In a 'fixed-pie' type of organization, hiring less talented colleagues might make you look good by comparison. A cynical (and self-protecting) hiring manager in such an organization is capable of locking in a level of mediocrity which will prove lucrative for him but hurt the performance of the unit as a whole.

4. Office politics, noun...

Defined as: a situation where reward is no longer linked to performance.

i read all god's children need travelling shoes so you don't have to

All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes by Maya Angelou (May 2017)

A couple years ago, I requested Maya Angelou's collected autobiographies using the inter-library loan system. I am generally a big fan of the system but this specific exercise revealed one of its few flaws. It turns out requesting a book over The Good Ol' Interwebs sometimes obscures facts like 'this book weighs as much as a brick', a condition entirely obvious whenever I pull a book off a dusty shelf.

So, I returned the shoebox-sized collection and requested each edition separately. Off the top of my head, I think there were eight in total. This book is somewhere around fifth or sixth in the sequence. As always, I enjoyed her writing thoroughly.

At the time of writing, Angelou's son was college-aged and she was seeking a new direction with her life in Ghana. The return to her ancestral home coincided with this important transitional moment. The collision of life events created a poignant undercurrent throughout; she was returning home, so to speak, just as her definition of home in America was undergoing its biggest adjustment in two decades. Though her writing specifically addressed the experience of returning to Africa as a black American, I found much in her words spoke to universal themes of defining community, struggling to bear the burden of history, and the deep-seated longing for discovering one's truest roots.

life changing books, pre-2011: inverting the pyramid

Inverting The Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (Fall 2010)

I'm looking forward to reading Michael Cox's Mixer, his first book focusing on soccer tactics in England. I should get to it sometime in the winter, I suspect (and write about it sometime next winter, I'm sure).

The only other pure tactics book I've read is Jonathan Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid. I'm not sure how it will compare. Inverting the Pyramid is considered among the most accessible titles on the topic. My guess is I'll enjoy The Mixer for its tactical insights but miss Wilson's talent at spotting and weaving interesting stories about the sport into his broader discussions about strategy.

My favorite such story was about the invention of Italy's famous defensive system, catenaccio. The main innovation was to position an extra defender between the standard defensive line and the goalkeeper. This extra player, the sweeper, was responsible for picking up loose balls, helping the defenders in front double-mark dangerous forwards, and act as a last-ditch 'insurance policy' for any defensive lapses in front of him (1).

The idea came early one morning along the docks. The manager (whose name I forget) was wandering among the fishing boats while thinking about his team. He watched a boat unload its catch and noted how the net holding the fish reliably transferred all the fish from the boat to the dock. Sometimes, though, a fish or two would fall free toward the water. But these escapees only enjoyed a brief freedom...they were caught by a second net strung out below...

A net below the net...a defender behind the defenders...

I think you get the idea, you savvy football-loving reader, you.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

0. And this changed your life how?

Oh right, sorry. It did, trust me.

0a. That explanation is rubbish, it is!

Oh, quiet, this blog is free for a reason.

1. This is not a purely defensive tactic...

Like all overly defensive systems, the key to the tactic was finding players capable of transcending the system's limitations. In the first version of the system, the key man was Facchetti, a full-back who contributed as much to the scoresheet as a forward. This player was able to essentially cover the entire left flank on his own, allowing the team to overcome the limitations imposed further forward by committing an extra player to the rear.

A more recent example of a similar concept was Barcelona's use of Dani Alves as essentially a 'right' player. Alves covered the entire flank on his own, allowing the Catalan side to commit an extra midfielder to bolster their short passing 'tiki-taka' system. Again, the key was Alves bringing balance to an inherently unbalanced tactical concept.

This is seen in other sports. Basketball teams recently have exposed the shortcoming of slow yet tall defensive players by using more players who can shoot from long distance. In helmet football, teams have shifted to using three safeties on defense to counter the new threat posed by the slot receiver without sacrificing run support.

how do you say 'the final exam' in french?

One thing my 'Final Exam' series glosses over is why I know more about the English league than I do about all the others combined. Why do I (like so many other converted American fans) follow teams from London, Manchester, and Liverpool instead of those from Barcelona, Milan, or Munich? I'm sure there are many good explanations but to me the simplest one makes the most sense: the English league uses English.

The shared language doesn't eliminate the entire learning curve. But after about ten minutes, it's pretty clear what a 'pitch' refers to and perfectly obvious what the implications are for being at the 'foot of the table'. I can talk to supporters of any club and get a better understanding of what is going on almost immediately. The challenge of learning what the 'touch-line' is pales in contrast to the task of learning the Spanish, Italian, or German needed to properly follow the leagues organized in those countries. For the average American, finding ways to share in the common football experience with English fans is just easier than it is with our Spanish counterparts.

The shared language effect is obvious in the TV industry. For me, an English-speaking American, a telecast in English will catch my attention while I'm likely to ignore a Spanish telecast showing the same game. And when the game ends, I'm going to read the match reports written in English. The feedback loop of English readers studying English articles to prepare for the English telecast which English columnists dissect in English articles goes around and around and around. Eventually, everything new is produced in English because everything else is already in English.

These days, TV remains the main opportunity for soccer viewing in the USA. Given the realities of how TV works, it makes sense to see England's league raking in the biggest broadcast rights fees from the US. On our airwaves, their games are the most frequently seen. And since English is the 'lingua franca' of the world, it makes sense to see the same dynamic play out in developing markets where English is, theoretically, a second or third language (but still ranks ahead of those foreign languages I cited above in terms of local users).

It is hard to predict how the internet will change this. As of now, the internet is probably the primary method of introducing new fans to the game and the viewing experience is increasingly shifting to mobile options (though still generally delivered by the TV companies which own, produce, and distribute these internet streams). It is probably a little easier these days than it was ten years ago to find games from foreign (as in, not England) leagues being streamed live (1). But I still think the challenge for other leagues is significant even if AC Milan's games are now generally broadcast in English. The democratized reality of internet content, so to speak,  suggests to me the number of AC Milan blogs written in English will be a small fraction of those written about Manchester United.

The trivial trends I think about for world football reflect broader realities shaping the direction of The Good Old Interwebs. It seems most web pages (based on my limited research) are built on back-end coding written primarily in English-derived programming languages. Today's biggest internet and tech companies are based in the USA. English is 3-0 up on the other languages, so to speak, in the Internet World Cup and it is hard to see how Chinese, Spanish, or German will get back into the contest.

Whenever I hear the expression 'universal language', I always get a sense of the present moment. English is described as 'universal' by those who think everyone is using it. The designation makes no promises for the future. It feels like the internet is changing this. The structure of the internet is a foundation for how information will be exchanged in the future. Even if more people use non-English languages in the future, the internet will still cater first to English-dominant users. Perhaps more importantly, the power to create, edit, and present internet content will rest in the fingertips of English-dominant web designers, software engineers, and content developers (2).

The moral considerations of the current administration's stance toward immigration often obscure some of the more ambiguous (and less emotionally-charged) long-term effects. America's power is in its economy and right now every company in the world is trying to figure out how to best leverage the internet for its own long-term interests. The best way for Europe to knock America off its perch as a world leader would be a Euro-zone agreement to stop using English (and with the UK doing you know what, the timing couldn't be better, quite frankly). China could accomplish the same by agreeing with its allies to build a new internet foundation based on Mandarin. How powerful would Tokyo or Moscow be tomorrow if we all woke up to find Facebook was accessible only by Russian or Japanese speakers? Konnichiwa means like, right?

Until those unlikely days, the current internet infrastructure continues to grow, expand, and reinforce itself with a mostly English-derived code base. America must lock in this advantage with the same vigor it has used countless times in building up its military capability (such as its nuclear program) to simply deter others from attacking it. If the English-based internet is unambiguously better than the prospects of a Chinese-based version, there will be no good reason to try and make a shift.

Policies preventing the entrance of multilingual programmers into the country during these early decades of the internet's rise increase the risk in marginal but non-trivial ways. The problems could manifest in too many versions to list (3). But the simplest ramifications are not hard to imagine.

Consider Google, a company co-founded by a Russian-born immigrant. Gee, good thing we allowed him in or the wealth (and tax revenue) generated by one of the world's biggest companies could easily have gone abroad. Keep erecting walls, literal or otherwise, and these inventive, resourceful, and relentless dreamers of tomorrow will share their hard-won spoils with the outside world we seem so determined to alienate today.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. Back in my college days...

Even as recently as 2010, I recall having a hard time finding a game from Spain or Germany on the internet. What's the expression for 'illegal stream' in Italian? Back then, I didn't know. Just the extra step of learning the right search terms in Spanish or Italian made it more likely I, as an English-dominant web user, would seek out English-based material.

2. Turn them into bowling alleys?

It's like how our national highway infrastructure, established decades ago, continues to influence today's national transportation policy decisions. A high-speed rail transition might pay off in the future. Or, perhaps a fleet of self-honking Hondas will zip up and down Main Streets nationwide. But what will be done with the five-lane freeways?

3. The premise of my first dystopian novel...

Quite frankly, the idea of a German-based internet is no doubt an extreme case.

hey cambridge- you with us or against us?

Boston's two most popular sports teams are the Patriots in football and the Red Sox in baseball. Any local observer would assume these teams enjoy the complete support of the surrounding community throughout the year (and especially in September, the month their playing schedules overlap).

However, lately I've noticed Cambridge does not seem to be completely on board. In the north of town is a mysterious 'Roethlisberger Park'. Surely, this green space is not named for the starting QB of the rival Pittsburgh Steelers? But why risk confusion? Let's rename it 'Bill Belichick's Open Acres' or 'The Julian Edelman Playground', just to be safe.

And what about this 'Steinbrenner Stadium' next to MIT? Again, surely not a homage to the great Yankees owner and executive. But still! I think it's time to consider some alternatives like 'Tim Wake-Field' or even 'Curt Schilling's Bloody Soccer Stadium'.

There is no excuse for these public spaces existing so close to the heart of Boston's sports scene. Names change all the time (perhaps a comment once made by former Patriots receiver Chad Ochocinco) so get on the train or stand clear of the doors, Cambridge, because the Red Line is crossing the Longfellow...

And don't act surprised if there are consequences for inaction. There's no law saying victory parades must involve the Charles River.

reading review: hillbilly elegy

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (May 2017)

J.D. Vance describes his experiences growing up in a disadvantaged Rust Belt community in this highly-regarded memoir. Though it is tempting to suggest political events explain this book's ascent to the top of bestseller lists (it was atop The New York Times Best Seller list in January 2017) there is an underlying quality to this work that made it nationally relevant prior to the (electoral) votes being counted (as evidenced by its place atop the same list in August 2016).

My Wednesday post mentioned the power of agency as one of this book's many themes. Those who succeed tend to believe their actions influence outcomes. For Vance, the primary application of agency came through his belief in education. Over time, his upbringing and experiences instilled and reinforced this belief in him. When he emerged into the adult world, Vance did so with a strong sense of control over his future.

Vance suspects this feeling was not shared among his childhood peers. One reason he suggests is the lack of positive role models in the community. Instead of seeing how going to college, learning a trade, or pursuing a creative field could pay off in the future, Vance's peers were surrounded by those disillusioned with the lack of economic opportunities in the area or disinterested in working for the scraps on offer.

A dangerous aspect of such an environment is the temptation to conclude success is based on an inborn trait. Many will avoid making an effort to change what they see as fixed, preferring to save their energy for outcomes more easily influenced. Vance did not see things in this way and he credits the development of his worldview to the support and care given to him by his grandparents. Although there were a number of instances when Vance could have fallen to the wayside, he managed to escape childhood with a belief in education and a confidence that his hard work would one day pay off.

One thing I really liked about this book is how Vance extended his individual reflections to better understand the issues plaguing his hometown. He writes in one part about how he observes a 'fight or flight' pattern among children who do not feel secure. Though he acknowledges the survival value of the tactic, he observes how it does not prove an effective formula for success in adulthood.

The idea of relying on survival skills for too long comes up again when he looks at why opportunity in America's Rust Belt is diminishing. Eventually, focusing too much on short-term survival limits opportunities to build up the skills or support needed for long-term success. He identifies a few factors which contribute to this situation: social isolation in communities, churches preferring emotional rhetoric over direct support, and a culture emphasizing masculinity. Though perhaps these were all important survival characteristics in a past generation, they are now proving harmful qualities for communities seeking success in tomorrow's world.

One up: What stood out to me was the way Vance kept his interjections or reflections out of the memoir portions of the book. He did this by slowly shifting the balance of his writing. The early portion of the book was almost strictly a retelling of his childhood. The later sections saw reflections and interjections intertwine with his descriptions of his adult experiences.

The pattern was reflected in the way I took notes. I took down very little from the early sections (where Vance focused on relating the events of his early days) and saw a steady increase in my note taking as I reached the later chapters (when he opened up about how he thought his experiences applied to society in a larger context).

One down: Vance is quick to extrapolate conclusions based on small sample sizes. He cites the influence of his grandparents and his older sister as major explanatory factors in the outcome of his life. Sounds reasonable, no? But it doesn't explain why things turned out so well for his sister, the one person in life with circumstances almost identical to the author yet growing up with the notable absence of herself as a supportive older sister.

Vance also looks back on his service with the Marines as a major positive influence. I did not doubt this for a second and I thought his explanation made a lot of sense. But it doesn't explain (or even acknowledge) why so many return from their military service with no improvement on their lives.

I think this speaks to a problem I have with how I apply my own personal experience. No matter how wise, reflective, or thoughtful I might be about a particular element of my past, the sample size always remains one. I am sure this is not a problem unique to me. But unless hundreds of lives influenced by similar conditions are observed over long periods of time (I believe these are known as longitudinal studies) the conclusions drawn from experience are subject to the same lazy, cherry-picking, 'yeah, so?' type of 'criticism' I employ in the previous paragraphs.

The open question for me at the moment is not whether relying heavily on experience to explain life results is rigorous. It isn't and I'm certain of that. What I'm not sure of is if this is still not the best way forward relative to other methods of thinking about success and failure. After all, when it comes to drawing from experience, you can only help but draw from what's there.

Just saying: I was surprised by how much I related to Vance's story. It speaks to his ability to connect with people of all backgrounds. I think readers who make the effort to understand this story and see how the ideas apply in their own communities will find this an enriching read in the way I did.

However, those opening this book expecting some kind of 'an explanation' regarding, say, election results should take their curious eyes elsewhere. This book isn't here to explain anything (except the author's life, thus far). It simply tells a story as well as it can, tries to fill in the blanks as reasonably as possible, and draws some possible larger lessons to take away from it.

i read epitaph of a small winner so you don't have to

Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis (May 2017)

This 1880 Brazilian classic came my way via recommendation from a reader. The comment accompanying the book was along the lines of 'this book reminded me of your blog'. Such statements tend to be true on average (!), of course, but the thought was accurate. Throughout this read, I saw many examples of what I consider the hallmarks of TOA: extended digressions, needless self-references, and deep reflections into the mundane details of daily living. But let us not get distracted by reminiscing...

One book this novel reminded me of was Matt Madden's 99 Ways to Tell a Story, a book I've written a little bit about in the past. I suppose if Madden had read Epitaph... in his formative years, he could have included the premise of this book (pretend you died, then wrote a memoir) to bring his storytelling methods up to a round one hundred.

Reading Epitaph of a Small Winner forced me into thinking once more about how I've structured this blog. At the time of reading, TOA was more a collection of essays than a true blog. I decided over the course of a few weeks to adjust the tempo and focus on shorter posts. Of the many different factors going into the decision, this book was among the foremost of them.

the final exam- extra time

Hi all,

Welcome back to my series about UEFA Champions League finals.

If your reaction to the above was "???", check out these links for parts one, two, three, and four.

Tim 

2014: Real Madrid 4, Atletico Madrid 1 (Real Madrid wins in extra-time)

This game was like the 2013 final, version 2.0. Real Madrid, the giant of the sport and record-holder for most European championships, was going for an unprecedented tenth title. Atletico, the little brother, was finally taking the inter-city feud with their trophy-laden neighbors to the sport's biggest stage.

Like with the prior year's final, the less prestigious side entered the match as underdogs. This made some sense. Historically speaking, if this was a rocks-paper-scissors game, Real was the rock-hard, er, rock, while Atletico was the dull pair of scissors.

Yet Atletico boasted the credentials of an equal opponent. They had just beaten Madrid for the Spanish league title. In the quarterfinals of this tournament, they eliminated Spain's other giant, Barcelona. Under manager Diego Simeone, Atletico had a knack for throttling opponents and picking them off on the counter-attack.

I was around town for this match and ended up watching the game with a few friends at The Field, one of my favorite bars in Cambridge. It was completely stuffed for the game. I again ran into an acquaintance (coworker) with a German background. This time, I didn't think much of it. He and I had gotten drinks there in the past.

The game was tense throughout. Atletico grabbed a first-half lead but, with their top goalscorer off injured, retreated into a defensive formation far earlier than usual. They hung on for dear life until the ninety-third minute...

Once the extra period started, Atletico's fatigue became evident. They conceded a second, then a third. When Real were awarded a penalty with the chance to make it 4-1, Ronaldo stepping forward to take it was a forgone conclusion. Everyone in the bar knew he would take all steps necessary to ensure he took the kick. His goal finalized the scoreline and a wild celebration ensued on the pitch.

Since the 2009 final, the 'Messi v Ronaldo' thing had subsided a bit. Messi's superior skill set found the perfect team and his five-year run since remains among the greatest in the sport's history. Ronaldo found his niche, though, scoring goals for fun in Madrid and always milking the spotlight whenever he got the chance.

As Atletico's players slumped to the ground in defeat, the question was not if but when Ronaldo would take off his jersey and parade his abs around Lisbon's Estadio da Luz. It was salt in the wound for us neutrals who adopted Atletico over the last 120 minutes. It was possible they would be back, of course, but I knew better.

2015: Barcelona 3, Juventus 1

Barcelona, perhaps motivated by Real Madrid's triumph the prior year, returned to the showpiece final after a brief absence. Big matches featuring Italian teams are always intriguing thanks to their teams' well-earned reputation for tactical excellence. So, I was eagerly anticipating this chess match between the Catalan giants and the Turin-based side.

Things seemed off, though, in the opening minutes. Juventus defended narrowly, ostensibly to clog the center of the pitch, but perhaps too much so. "Barcelona are going to have a lot of room to hit passes wide and in behind the fullbacks," I remarked to my friend watching with me. Sometimes, when a team defends too narrowly, they force themselves to run too far to address a threat on the wings. The effect on the defensive shape is like an accordion being pulled apart and a clever attacking team can exploit the unaccounted spaces between players to create chances.

The comment went largely ignored, or maybe he just didn't have time to respond, because moments later Messi knocked a diagonal ball into the left corner. It found an in-stride Alba who touched it to Neymar. As Juventus scrambled to adjust their defense and retain their compact shape, Neymar found Iniesta darting into the box before he slipped the ball to a waiting Rakitic. The Croatian knocked the ball into the goal from six yards away and it was 1-0, Barcelona. I can't claim to have predicted the goal, of course, but that little comment...you know?

The friend over for this game, Hoa, is the same one who is inexplicably a Manchester United fan and a long-suffering recipient of my half-baked tactical analysis. He came over a little before kickoff and we played FIFA head-to-head to pass the time until the match started (breaking news: I picked Liverpool and he picked United). This is no new thing for us as we have played FIFA regularly since we first met in 2006 (1).

Tactically speaking, my understanding of the sport has come a long way in those ten years. FIFA played a major role in this. Back then, my strategy resembled what eleven rogue (and I suppose, somehow, sentient) rooks set loose on a chessboard might come up with: find open space and run in a straight line forward (2). To be fair, it's a fairly common strategy (but quickly wears out the 'sprint' button on the controller, leading to added expenses).

Over the next decade, I played a lot of FIFA. In the process, I learned about wing play, counter attacks, and through balls. This is, as I've come to learn, not an unusual story at all. The rise of interest in this country tracks with the increase in accessibility to the highest levels of the game. Nowhere is this more evident than in video games. The same type of kid who once learned the nuances of the shotgun formation in the Madden NFL football franchise or honed his full-court press in the NBA Live series is now dribbling his way through hours of FIFA soccer.

On this day, I flexed those strategic muscles honed over many years of FIFA gaming. I knew Hoa too well. His preference to play with just one forward meant my three-man defense was more than prepared to handle his attacker in front of my goal. In fact, with two extra players in defense, I risked leaving my own attack undermanned. I resolved the problem by installing Steven Gerrard, an attack-minded midfielder, as my right-sided defender. Logically, he would step forward into the attack whenever the other defenders were properly positioned to handle the threat posed by the opposing forward.

Virtual Gerrard responded by scoring two goals in a 3-0 rout, mostly after charging forward at will into open space. He's a lot like that rook I described earlier, this Virtual Gerrard, and his reckless charging about made the difference.

Maybe things haven't changed all that much in ten years. It proved true on the real pitch as it was predicted on my virtual one: at the final whistle, Barcelona once again were champions of Europe.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. Just stating the facts, part 1

According to TOA, my winning percentage against Hoa is 100%. He contests this figure and cites verified results to make his case. I concede that he makes a decent argument.

2. Just stating the facts, part 2

Hoa, being a hopeless player, still employs this rather blunt strategy, though his pace is more pawn-like.

yet another post about a traffic light

I recently read Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance's bestselling memoir about his experiences growing up in an Appalachian town. Vance uses his experiences to examine the myths and realities of the 'hillbilly' culture and the result is a thought-provoking read throughout. I expect to post more about Vance's insights regarding America's struggling rural regions shortly.

But today, I wanted to explore a specific theme from this book that reminded me of my recent post about a new traffic light pattern. At these Cambridge intersections, I saw how reversing the turn order created an additional safety margin for drivers. Though I am not formally trained in this field, I concluded the change made the intersection unambiguously safer than it was using the regular turn pattern.

The link between the traffic light pattern and Vance's book is the idea of agency. Hillbilly Elegy describes many struggling people who did not expect their hard work to lead to positive life outcomes. If these people could believe in the possibilities resulting from their own hard work, perhaps things could start to improve in certain struggling areas (1).

A sense of agency makes a big difference in how people confront new situations or navigate unknown environments. The main improvement of the light pattern I described a couple of weeks ago is how it gives drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians more direct control in creating good outcomes as they enter and exit the intersection (2).

It occurred to me later that perhaps my gushing praise for the new traffic pattern missed a larger point. The intersection is safer, of course, and improving safety is critical, but if the design excuses sloppier driving, perhaps the 'sloppy driver' effect starts to cancel out the 'designed safety' effect a little bit. I still like the redesigned pattern I noticed when I rode out of Arlington but I'm pretty sure intersection redesign is only a local solution to road safety issues. For the citywide safety problem, relying solely on this method is an insufficient solution (3).

At best, redesign is like putting a splint over a still-healing leg. The solution does not directly address the problem and, in extreme cases, might encourage more of the destructive behavior. At complex intersections, the main problem is almost always cars getting in each other's way. Thus, the solution should involve keeping cars out of the intersection until the way is clear. The same effect I described resulting from the pattern change would be observed by just keeping all cars at a complete stop for a couple seconds longer. The spirit of the solution is familiar to anyone with fair skin; though sunscreen always helps, the best way to avoid a sunburn is to stay in the shade.

In general, I worry safety-minded rules of thumb like the 'longer red' will struggle to take hold when detailed traffic pattern design changes appear so beneficial. This is a gut feeling based on a number of different things. One factor is the discrepancy in the talk about road safety and the data about road fatalities. In looking at the results, this discrepancy appears to have gone on for decades. In the USA alone, the industry accepts over 30,000 motor vehicle deaths per year (4). In the upcoming three months, history suggests the same number of Americans will die on the road as did from 2001 to 2014 in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined. The automobile industry casually accepts more deaths than the military! The last time the total number of automobile fatalities fell below 30,000 was in 1945, a year I can't imagine was very popular for road trips. Safety is a nice concept, I guess, but it's apparently just a little too slow to fully implement on our nation's roads.

My observations of driver behavior further reinforce my skepticism about safety improvements. Each day, I see how little driving decisions might add up to this mythical 30k goal. In my own cycling adventures around town, I frequently witness safety being exchanged for speed. These trades account for almost all of my close calls on two wheels: every driver who accelerated past on the right, made a sudden u-turn on a two-way street, or pulled over without blinkers to pick up ride share customers was cutting down a commute by placing my life at risk.

I once thought drivers were encouraged to do these crazy things by bad road design. A street with free or subsidized curbside parking is a good example. Allowing cars to store themselves for just a few dollars next to buildings which rent for tens of thousands a month endangers cyclists and pedestrians by inviting drivers to take their eyes off the road, stop in the middle of a bike lane, or suddenly start backing up against the flow of traffic to reach a space (5). The road design is nobody's fault and I can't blame a driver for operating within the limits of the law. But such an acknowledgement fails to explain how the system came into existence in the first place. A driver playing by the rules of the game rarely seems to ask about the author of the rulebook.

These days, though, I'm not as convinced about the role of poor road design. The culture in the automobile industry pays a great deal of lip service to safety and, although I believe the sentiments about protecting riders are genuine, I think the lack of real results (you know, as in, a number less than thirty thousand annual fatalities) is creating a sense of powerlessness among drivers. I rarely get the sense a driver believes in his or her ability to make the roads safer by simply being a better driver. Those self-driving cars looming on the horizon don't help the message much, either, as their development implies a future where no human will be a good enough driver to remain behind the wheel. Could such a future exist if drivers in the present were good enough? I suspect not (6).

Some might argue here (or perhaps just helpfully point out, in case I'm unaware) that the progress made over the years in the field of automotive safety has been significant. But despite all the new seatbelts, airbags, and traffic signals, the results do not support the rhetoric. Motor vehicle collisions remain a major cause of preventable death in children. For American teenagers, car crashes are the leading cause of death. I don't know who coined the expression 'think of the children' but I'll rule out Messers Ford, Honda, and Buick.

Improving safety features at complex intersections is a crucial component of creating safer cities and towns for everyone. It always will be. But drivers relying on superior intersection design to excuse their poor decisions behind the wheel? It would be like NRA members handing out bulletproof vests to improve gun safety.

A safety feature is very different from a culture of safety. To effectively cultivate such a culture requires commitment from day one of a driver's participation in the industry. My experience suggests we are not quite there yet. I still remember my driver's license test: four total minutes, three left turns, two right turns, and a partridge in a pear tree (7).

In hindsight, my test experience says an awful lot about what the standards are for acceptable driving. After supplying almost no proof of my driving ability, I left the DMV with a new license and an implied message about how little my driving ability had to do with overall road safety. Many speculater later that the only way I probably would have failed the test was by not buckling my seatbelt, perhaps further reinforcing my lack of agency in making the roads a little safer for all. It's too bad, really, since agency is the most important feature in a safety culture (and the only relevant one from a long term perspective). If drivers do not feel their actions influence overall safety, I assume they won't make much effort to drive safely.

It brings me back to Vance's book. Agency is one of the main ideas tying together much of Hillbilly Elegy. A sense of agency separated those who fought against the downward pull of their surroundings from those who allowed themselves to get sucked into its negativity. In many examples, readers see how those who felt in control of their life outcomes behaved differently than those who did not.

Of course, improving the sense of agency is a mammoth task. It took Vance around three hundred pages just to explain the idea (8). It will probably take more than a post or two on TOA to get the point across to the automobile industry. So, in the meantime, I suppose there is little choice but to continue on the current path (9).

Not all hope is lost, though. The good news about agency problems is anyone can help. Each little action builds a community's sense of control over its collective destiny. It occurred to me the other day in the context of cycling. I used to think it would be terrific if a law passed tomorrow mandating we all wear a helmet when we ride. But then I realized that if everyone wore a helmet by choice, no such law would be required.

A great reason for me to wear a helmet is that anytime I do so advertises the idea of wearing a helmet to everyone else. Now, I suspect most adults make their helmet decisions independent of what I put on my head. But who knows, maybe some little kid will see me zip by and go 'who is this unemployed blogger wearing that awesome helmet? I want to be almost as cool as him.' If that kid straps on a helmet the next time he rides a bike, that's a big win to me. If a ripple effect of helmet-wearing spreads across the city, that's a big win for Boston's culture of road safety.

I can contribute in other ways. I've noticed that although I often see cyclists zip through red lights, whenever I stop my bike at an intersection others behind me tend to stop as well. This might be because I'm sort of in the way (which isn't the idea, but I'll take it) or perhaps my fellow riders suspect I see something ahead making it unsafe to ride through. I suspect sometimes it has to do with the 'advertising' concept, though. By stopping, I suggest to those behind me that maybe they should stop, too. I've started stopping several feet behind big trucks lately (because the Demands Of Industry sometimes dictate sudden, sweeping right turns which temporarily turn bike lanes into human meat grinders). In these cases, I'm often joined by the riders coming in behind me.

Improved intersection design remains a critical component of improving road safety. It is made deceptively appealing as a strategy because on the surface it appears a win-win: implementing superior design will improve safety without coming at a cost for anyone. But seeing it as a silver bullet hides the cost of discouraging drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians from remaining vigilant about making healthy decisions for themselves and for those around them.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. What a dumb thing for a researcher to conclude!

Vance cited research which showed that those who believed drug addiction was a disease 'show less of an inclination to resist it'. In my original draft, I included this in the main post. But as I edited, I realized that I did not agree with the idea. So though perhaps the post flowed better with that concept included, I decided to remove it in the editing step.

My question here is how does someone 'show less of an inclination to resist' an addiction? Perhaps my objection was to the phrasing of the findings as much as it was to the idea these researchers were studying.

2. No need to drive safe, the guardrail will catch me!

This is not the first time a book influenced my understanding of traffic. If my memory serves me correctly, I read in Tom Vanderbilt's efficiently named Traffic about the higher incidence of car crashes along dangerous mountain roads with a guardrail compared to similar roads without a guardrail.

One explanation for this finding cites the agency felt by drivers as they responded to an apparently more dangerous section of guardrail-free road. A driver, seeing the guardrail, senses a safe road and drives more recklessly. The safer appearance of the road perhaps suggested to drivers a reduced ability to control their safety outcome as they drove along it.

3. This is who I wanted to be when I grew up?

As I typed this sentence, I realized I talk about intersections far more frequently than logic would dictate.

4. Though with this type of thinking, I suppose I could be wrong about anything...

I concede the possibility that every weekday morning the bigwigs at Honda and Toyota and GM sit around a conference room table and pound their fists about the unacceptability of so many road fatalities. If this is the case, I've yet to hear about it.

All I see is the same marketing I assume everyone else does. These advertisements tout the car's safety features relative to other cars, a clever tactic because in order for a 'relative' safety feature to have any merit it must be compared against a fixed/accepted status quo consumers are unable to improve upon unless they pay extra money.

In the end, it should just come down to lives lost. One way to get to 30,000 deaths next year would be if my entire hometown was run over by a 34E bus on January 1, 2018. This is obviously an unrealistic scenario (though not difficult to imagine as my premise for a modern interpretation on 'The Lottery').

5. FOR FREE!

The baffling aspect of 'on street' parking is how it seems to contradict my understanding of local land values. I used to live in an apartment in South Boston where the driveway rented for around $300 per month. That's about $10 per day for a fixed place to leave a car all year.

To calculate what an on-street spot should go for based on $10 per day for a driveway, I first needed to understand the premium for temporary parking compared to permanent parking. To calculate such an amount, I looked at how hotels were priced relative to apartment rents. My logic was the difference between the permanent living space and the temporary one would give me a decent estimate of the premium an on-street space should charge.

My casual observation concluded hotels go for around two to three times the daily rent of area apartments. Using $10 per day for my former driveway, on street parking should go for around $20 to $30 per day. It feels about right because local parking garages charge a comparable amount for all-day parking.

I looked up what the rates are on local meters and found the range varied from $1.25 to $4 per hour. This is not quite the 'close but no cigar' result I was expecting. A driver paying to park all day at those rates will spend somewhere between $15 and $40 per day or so. But keep in mind the meter rates do not factor in all the free spaces available. If the free and metered spaces were averaged out, the hourly 'rate' will surely fall.

On the topic of free...people love FREE stuff, do they not? Those who choose to drive in gas-guzzling circles seeking a FREE space instead of paying some garage $10 might choose differently if the FREE on-street option was eliminated. Just by charging a nominal sum, a city could dissuade some of the congestion-causing traffic resulting from people seeking out a FREE space. These drivers would either drive straight to a garage or find an alternate means to enter the city.

6. Will the next invention be the self-ranting blogger?

I wanted to rant against the self-driving car in this post but it (somehow) didn't fit. So, I'll just put into this footnote the thing I always rant about regarding these self-driving autos:

If automating driving is so easy, why are humans still driving subway cars?

And the self-driving car is not really a special example. Almost all inventions appear designed to take driving decisions away from drivers. What's the last invention whose purpose was to make drivers better at driving?

7. I passed, by the way...

I thought the test was funny at the time but I know better than to laugh today. My singular experience hardly proves any larger trend, of course, but I'm open to explanations about this whole 'thirty thousand deaths a year' thing.

8. Well, among other things...

If agency was such a simple concept to teach, Vanderbilt's Traffic would have fit on the back of a t-shirt. It would have looked like this:

Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt

Chapter 1: Drive better...

The End

Perhaps, a bumper sticker would work better:

"If you can read this, get your eyes back on the road!"

9. And what is this 'current path', dare I ask?

Glad you asked! It's the one where car makers produce expensive new safety features every year while the rest of us struggle through clogged intersections, the unavoidable result of months-long construction projects resulting from traffic engineers deciding to change two traffic lightbulbs and paint a couple of stripes on the road to improve traffic flow by a percentage point or two.