moneyball

[michael <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ken, Try this:

72: James's analysis became more relevant since he published his
first Baseball Abstract in 1977, when salaries were beginning to
soar.  "There was but one question he left unasked, and it
vibrated between his lines:  if gross miscalculations of a
person's value could occur on a baseball field, before a live
audience of thirty thousand, and a television audience of millions
more, what did that say about the measurement of performance in
other lines of work?  If professional baseball players could be
over -- or under valued, who couldn't?  Bad as they may have been,
the statistics used to evaluate baseball players were probably far
more accurate than anything used to measure the value of people
who didn't play than anything used to measure the value of people
who didn't play baseball for a living."?

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901