Monday, May 08, 2006

Freakonomics is fun

I loved the Freakonomics book. Here the authors look at some statistics about elite teenage soccer players on English soccer teams. From these statistics they deduce that "you should do what you love". This is probably good advice but they are deducing a whole lot from very little. They don't discuss what happens to those teenage players later. And my exhaustive statistical analysis of the Manchester United squad shows that their player's birthdates aren't clumped at the beginning: Jan, Feb, Feb, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Aug, Sep, Oct, Oct, Oct, Nov, Nov. So in fact players with birthdates early in the year are more likely to show false promise, and live miserable lives, forever repeating that they could have been contenders. Hey this Freakonomics thing is fun!

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