I think it's distasteful to mention it the same way that I think that it is distasteful to consider plenty of truths, including the notions that... well, the popularity of Soccer is growing in my country.
Just because something is true doesn't mean it's a fun, cuddly thing to point out.
If people only ever discussed fun, pleasant things, this would be a very boring world.
I read this a couple of months back, and really enjoyed it.
While in Japan I was trying to choose between a Dragon Gate Pro Wrestling show, and the Sumo tournament, and after reading the sumo chapter figured I'd go with the event that admits the fights are staged.
And, you know, steel chairs to the head are pretty sweet.
To be fair, Levitt doesn't suggest that sumo wrestling is fixed in the sense that the ultimate winners and losers of tournaments are predetermined. His argument is the structure of the tournament means that the only wrestlers with a huge incentive going into the final match are those who might win the tournament, and those who are 7-7 (because they can at least come out of the thing with an 8-7 win that increases their ranking). Since the 7-7 wrestlers are generally fighting people who aren't much affected by the outcome of their final bout, Levitt argues that these wrestlers are bribing their opponents to lay down by offering to throw a match in return the next time they meet. That's the theory he tests (and claims to prove) by analysis of the match results. However, it wouldn't affect the overall winner of the tournament.
Yep, it's a pretty interesting system actually. Kinda mafia style. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.
For the record (though admittedly from an incredibly biased source), neither economics nor statistics are mathematics.
People find actual mathematics dry for a number of reasons that are actually its fault, let's not ascribe the faults of other fields as well. At best, these two fields are somewhat closer to arithmetic than math.
-N
(an applied mathematician and devout follower of all things Paul O'Brien)
Good review Paul. There was an article back in December in The Economist which details a paper that shows the statistical techniques used by Levitt for the abortion article were flawed and running the hypothesis again with better techniques showed no relationship. There could also have been a problem with the data he used but I cannot remember the whole article.
"If people only ever discussed fun, pleasant things, this would be a very boring world."
The most ironic statement in the past two or three weeks.
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