Beyond teaching you some technical skills around computing and data, CS111 also wants to help you think about some of the broader (societal) issues surrounding data and computing. To this end, we will have three short reading assignments that ask you to reflect on implications and possible principles of working with computing and data. This is the first such assignment.
We estimate this assignment will take roughly an hour.
Moneyball refers to using analytics and statistics, rather than human scouts, as the primary metric for selecting baseball players (the methods are used in other sports, but the term is associated with baseball partly due to a book named “Moneyball” (by Michael Lewis) about one of the first major-league teams to try this approach).
(Never fear, you don’t have to know anything—or care—about baseball to do this assignment!)
Read the Synopsis and Impact sections of the Wikipedia article on the Moneyball movie. Even though this is about the movie version, this synposis suffices for our needs.
Read the first three paragraphs of the following article, which explains what scouts looked for in a bit more detail: An Examination of the Moneyball Theory: A Baseball Statistical Analysis by Ehren Wassermann, Daniel R. Czech, Matthew J. Wilson & A Barry Joyner. Published in The Sport Journal, January 2, 2005.
Read The Economics of Moneyball: Do the principles really work anymore? by Kevin Grier and Tyler Cowen. Published online, December 9, 2011.
Identify 4-6 single-sentence items, each of which is a principle, hypothesis, or key takeaway that you identified based on these readings. These don’t need to be (and most should not be) factual details. We are more interested in general ideas that these articles inspired.
Sample answer: If we had given you articles to read about the improvements in public health that occurred after campaigns to get doctors and nurses to wash their hands more frequently, your list could have included:
Each of these statements covers more than handwashing, and thus could serve as a principle for other efforts. This is the approximate heft we seek in your responses to Moneyball.
This assignment will be graded lightly. We will check that your responses:
Enter your observations in the following Canvas “quiz”. (Ignore the points values marked on the questions – Canvas just needs us to put points there).
We will have you look at these principles again in light of other articles we read later in the course, so also keep a copy where you can easily find them again.