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Sometimes the stats miss the mark

Last night I watched an incredible baseball game. At the end of the season, it will most likely be in the top 10 games of the year. John Gruber even brought it up and linked to this story in the NY Times. There were points where I almost turned the game off, but my opportunities to watch the Yankees in California are few and far between, so I was going to suffer through what seemed like an impending loss.

Then the comeback began. It was that familiar feeling I’ve had so many times over the past decade when you just know they are going to win. But what really caught my attention was something Jon Miller said after the Yankees had scored four runs in the 9th against Jonathan (Guns of) Broxton and he was walking off the field to the dugout. Broxton came into the game with a four run lead, so it wasn’t a save opportunity and giving up those four runs in the ninth wasn’t a blown save. Broxton didn’t come back out in the 10th, that honor was bestowed upon George Sherrill. Since the game was tied when Sherrill came in, Broxton wasn’t the losing pitcher.

So Broxton doesn’t get a blown save or a loss, but his four runs in one inning is good for a 36.00 ERA. So his stats aren’t completely unscathed, but I think I said it best with my tweet last night.

What a statistical sin that Broxton gets neither the blown save nor the loss in that game.

Mint.com – A review of the investments section

I’ve been a big fan of Mint.com ever since I first heard of it. They’ve been in the news lately since they’ve announced that they are being purchased by Intuit for $170 million dollars. While many people have congratulated them on creating a great product and now reap the financial benefits of it. Others have thought it would have been better for them to continue independently and continue to drive innovation in their product. Regardless of how you feel about their corporate situation, very few people are critical of the product that Mint has put together since they started up.

In the short amount of time since they launched, they’ve added a lot of features that customers have asked for on their forums, one of which being investment tracking. For obvious reasons, this was something I really wanted to see them add, but when they did I was somewhat underwhelmed. And now that I have re-visited the tool, I think I know why. One of the things that makes Mint so great is its vast amount of data that they have. And when the investment tracking first launched, they have very little data. Fast forward a year, and they now have much more of both my data, and everyone else’s (anonymous) data.
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Mapping the Seven Deadly Sins

Just saw a very cool article from Wired magazine this morning. Not really much of an article so much as some data visualization. Take a look at some views on the “seven deadly sins” as they occur across the United States.

American Vice: Mapping the 7 Deadly Sins

Average income compared with number of people living below the poverty line.