Peeing in Japanese is called "Oshikko." Sounds kind of like a cute word, it's also typically Japanese in that it's onomatopoeia, Japanese scholars (unlike a lot of words that came from Chinese) invented the word to sound like the actual act of urinating. As you might expect, this post is a little different from normal and not for the "gentile" type of reader.
I think the general public is too caught up on peeing, farting, pooping, all the natural bodily functions that people do. Sure, nobody wants to smell urine in the streets or see homeless people crouched in the corner doing the business in broad daylight (happens all the time where I work in downtown Los Angeles), but on the other extreme the rules of etiquette are to me are too stuck-up. When I'm in the restroom with other guys, I feel a social anxiety not to fart, which really shouldn't be the case. We get teased as kids about farting in public, but as adults we should know better and liberalize farting and peeing. Like when one is in the stall, it should be OK to talk about things, as we both know what's going on...it's just a natural process of the human body, like sneezing or coughing. One wouldn't cut off all conversation to wait for someone to stop blinking, let's say.
There are times when I've been on the verge of having to poop on the side of a road. It happens. It's important to remember to gauge your stomach after a big meal, remember when the last time you did the business, and make a smart judgment. One's stomach also "digests" food the more one walks, as I find that going on a long hike after a big meal can really enhance the "excretion" process. And Joshua Tree National Park, I'm sorry, there was one time I was unable to hold it and I had to just leave a little extra on the paths. I hope I can be forgiven. But that's another thing that could be improved culturally: let it be OK to leave excrement on the paths, as long as you pick up or dig after oneself. It just seems so much more efficient that way than to hold it in and possibly do damage to one's body. My dad always says, "farting is life's air." It's true; as long as I'm standing way away from someone, it should be OK to just let out a fart for all people.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Peak (てっぺん)
The word in Japanese for peak or summit is "Teppen" or てっぺん, and it's also one of my worst fears. It really keeps me up at night that I've reached a peak in life and dodgeball that I've already reached my highest potential, there's nothing better than I can do, that it's only downhill from here.
Dodgeball is definitely this way. Entering my 6th year of dodgeball now, I've played a lot of games, learned a lot of things, but now I think my skills have pretty as high as they can get. My performance has not gotten better for a while, and it's all I can do to stop it from deteriorating. I sometimes recall my glory days fondly and try to conjure up good thoughts. Different sports have different "peak years" for players where football is around 22-25, basketball is a little older, and baseball is around 26-27, so I've passed that golden age of sports performance that most people talk about (still holding onto 28!) and pretty soon I'm afraid I have to rely on veteran savvy and wily experience......not encouraging. I still want to get better, there's still a lot to work on, a lot of ways I CAN get better, but hopefully my body will cooperate and retain those reflexes and some of those skills. Cuz when one hits 30, it doesn't matter which sport, from bowling to tennis to skiing to (yes, even chess cuz your mind also has a peak) it all goes downhill from there.
I don't think peaks apply as much to life. Donald Trump (69) and Bernie Sanders (74) are kind of proving that this year......one gets wiser, older, and more experienced....There is a learning curve though for certain endeavors such as language: one's ability to learn language peaks during childhood (like 7 or 8, I'd gather) and only goes down from there. Music ability also has a peak somewhere, appearance (sexiness!) peaks differently for different people (and varies depending on gender, too, unfortunately) but kind of like sports, there's other ways to compensate for those peaks, one has to be more creative. Sports stars can retire from a game at age 35-40 and then have more prosperous careers doing other activities.
I'm also deathly afraid of peaks in fantasy baseball, but not that my skill is peaking......after all, what skill is there really? Other than guessing, doing research, and making educated guesses.... (the monkey with a dartboard analogy comes to mind), but investing in players and hoping they haven't peaked and are going downhill. This has happened a lot to me in fantasy baseball, as Carlos Quentin (after a 36 HR season and then completely tanking) comes to mind, or getting the downhill years of Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Derek Jeter, and Mark Teixeira ( there's a trend forming here of not getting Yankees). It's almost impossible to predict when exactly a player has "peaked," but common indicators are: 1.) he's on the wrong side of 30 (hits close to home), 2.) his statistics has crystallized for a few years and not gotten better, setting a "ceiling" which he can't theoretically get better than, and 3.) he's already started to show signs of injury, etc. And the slide from the peak doesn't go the same for each player, some are a gradual decline which is nice and won't frustrate someone too much, but some downhills are rather precipitous and aggravating, especially with injuries. Some players don't ever peak, I guess.....Mariano Rivera comes to mind, pitching continuously until he was 42 years at a high level until retirement, and it doesn't seem like David Ortiz will have peaked, hitting 37 home runs and 100+ RBI last season at the age of 39, and this season (age 40) will be his last. Some players peak much earlier than others, some players peak late......the common theme is that when we know they've peaked, it's sad.......We thought we knew them and got their glory years, but now they're a shell of their former selves (looking at you, David Wright, Evan Longoria, Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols, etc., etc.)
Here's hoping that I and others haven't peaked and there's still plenty of awesomeness left to go!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Dodgeball is definitely this way. Entering my 6th year of dodgeball now, I've played a lot of games, learned a lot of things, but now I think my skills have pretty as high as they can get. My performance has not gotten better for a while, and it's all I can do to stop it from deteriorating. I sometimes recall my glory days fondly and try to conjure up good thoughts. Different sports have different "peak years" for players where football is around 22-25, basketball is a little older, and baseball is around 26-27, so I've passed that golden age of sports performance that most people talk about (still holding onto 28!) and pretty soon I'm afraid I have to rely on veteran savvy and wily experience......not encouraging. I still want to get better, there's still a lot to work on, a lot of ways I CAN get better, but hopefully my body will cooperate and retain those reflexes and some of those skills. Cuz when one hits 30, it doesn't matter which sport, from bowling to tennis to skiing to (yes, even chess cuz your mind also has a peak) it all goes downhill from there.
I don't think peaks apply as much to life. Donald Trump (69) and Bernie Sanders (74) are kind of proving that this year......one gets wiser, older, and more experienced....There is a learning curve though for certain endeavors such as language: one's ability to learn language peaks during childhood (like 7 or 8, I'd gather) and only goes down from there. Music ability also has a peak somewhere, appearance (sexiness!) peaks differently for different people (and varies depending on gender, too, unfortunately) but kind of like sports, there's other ways to compensate for those peaks, one has to be more creative. Sports stars can retire from a game at age 35-40 and then have more prosperous careers doing other activities.
I'm also deathly afraid of peaks in fantasy baseball, but not that my skill is peaking......after all, what skill is there really? Other than guessing, doing research, and making educated guesses.... (the monkey with a dartboard analogy comes to mind), but investing in players and hoping they haven't peaked and are going downhill. This has happened a lot to me in fantasy baseball, as Carlos Quentin (after a 36 HR season and then completely tanking) comes to mind, or getting the downhill years of Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Derek Jeter, and Mark Teixeira ( there's a trend forming here of not getting Yankees). It's almost impossible to predict when exactly a player has "peaked," but common indicators are: 1.) he's on the wrong side of 30 (hits close to home), 2.) his statistics has crystallized for a few years and not gotten better, setting a "ceiling" which he can't theoretically get better than, and 3.) he's already started to show signs of injury, etc. And the slide from the peak doesn't go the same for each player, some are a gradual decline which is nice and won't frustrate someone too much, but some downhills are rather precipitous and aggravating, especially with injuries. Some players don't ever peak, I guess.....Mariano Rivera comes to mind, pitching continuously until he was 42 years at a high level until retirement, and it doesn't seem like David Ortiz will have peaked, hitting 37 home runs and 100+ RBI last season at the age of 39, and this season (age 40) will be his last. Some players peak much earlier than others, some players peak late......the common theme is that when we know they've peaked, it's sad.......We thought we knew them and got their glory years, but now they're a shell of their former selves (looking at you, David Wright, Evan Longoria, Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols, etc., etc.)
Here's hoping that I and others haven't peaked and there's still plenty of awesomeness left to go!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
百聞一見しかず (A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words)
Apparently English speakers aren't the only ones with the proverb similar to "a picture is worth a thousand words," as the Japanese have the saying that "hearing 100 times is not worth seeing just once." Applies in a lot of contexts.
Recently with the acquisition of my nifty GoPro camera (very proud!) I am able to record dodgeball videos and watch myself on camera, it's a huge difference. A whole new world opens up to me. I used to write these long essays to teammates about what happened in a match, how to get better, what our strategy for the next game is, but sometimes a streaming video just does the job much better. That's why facebook, instagram, emojis, etc. are so much more popular in the modern world (and rightfully so) than letters, phone conversations, and other all-text or all-word communications were back in the day (as in, like 20 years ago when all those old things were still in vogue), actually even email! What communication styles have a leg up on nowadays is just to use a picture to express so many different concepts right away. Even a "heart" emoji or a "happy" emoji does the job better than expressing that in so many words, people just get more of a reaction (at least I do) and more of a common sense from those pictures than just mere words. That's why movies are excelling while books are dwindling, emails are written less with words than memes or gifs, it's a whole new way of conversation. I personally don't necessarily love this new development, I think there's still a pureness in using language and words to express oneself, but for better or worse that's what the world is trending towards, and I don't necessarily blame anyone.
Even in this blog, I've taken to adding a picture to some of the blog posts knowing that the picture will be part of the post, and will instantly get more attention than the text. Text is boring and wordy and long to read; people's attention spans stretch so much less than they did even ten or twenty years ago; gotta get the point across immediately or else you get the dreaded "TL;DR" (Too Long; Did not Read.) - again not exactly something I like, but is definitely prevalent in today's society so you gotta play by the rules.
Baseball statistics are a huge example of pictures (or rather, videos) being better as well. There can be tons of data gathered about a player like his walk rate, strikeout rate, ERA, strand rate, groundball ratio, each one sounding more sophisticated than the next, but there's really nothing that compares to actually watching a player play the game, gauging the way the player swings a bat or throws a pitch, the motion, the way hitters react, the movement the ball has on a breaking ball, it really is a thing of beauty.
Introducing my gf to my parents is another matter. No matter how many times I describe what my gf is, how pretty she is, how she makes me laugh, how we get along, how fun our dates are, it just doesn't compare to actually having parents and gf meet sometime, to get a real gauge, get a face-to-face interaction, even to just allow each other to see the human element of this concept of a gf. That's a pretty significant step, a situation where just seeing someone (worth a thousand words!) also gets trumped (Trump, that's a loaded word nowadays for better or worse) by the aura of the symbolism of the moment, the acknowledgement that someone is real and not just a concept that parents have held for a long time, to recognize that the gf exists and make the relationship real, that is worth more than maybe a thousand pictures (that's a Bobby-ism!)
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Recently with the acquisition of my nifty GoPro camera (very proud!) I am able to record dodgeball videos and watch myself on camera, it's a huge difference. A whole new world opens up to me. I used to write these long essays to teammates about what happened in a match, how to get better, what our strategy for the next game is, but sometimes a streaming video just does the job much better. That's why facebook, instagram, emojis, etc. are so much more popular in the modern world (and rightfully so) than letters, phone conversations, and other all-text or all-word communications were back in the day (as in, like 20 years ago when all those old things were still in vogue), actually even email! What communication styles have a leg up on nowadays is just to use a picture to express so many different concepts right away. Even a "heart" emoji or a "happy" emoji does the job better than expressing that in so many words, people just get more of a reaction (at least I do) and more of a common sense from those pictures than just mere words. That's why movies are excelling while books are dwindling, emails are written less with words than memes or gifs, it's a whole new way of conversation. I personally don't necessarily love this new development, I think there's still a pureness in using language and words to express oneself, but for better or worse that's what the world is trending towards, and I don't necessarily blame anyone.
Even in this blog, I've taken to adding a picture to some of the blog posts knowing that the picture will be part of the post, and will instantly get more attention than the text. Text is boring and wordy and long to read; people's attention spans stretch so much less than they did even ten or twenty years ago; gotta get the point across immediately or else you get the dreaded "TL;DR" (Too Long; Did not Read.) - again not exactly something I like, but is definitely prevalent in today's society so you gotta play by the rules.
Baseball statistics are a huge example of pictures (or rather, videos) being better as well. There can be tons of data gathered about a player like his walk rate, strikeout rate, ERA, strand rate, groundball ratio, each one sounding more sophisticated than the next, but there's really nothing that compares to actually watching a player play the game, gauging the way the player swings a bat or throws a pitch, the motion, the way hitters react, the movement the ball has on a breaking ball, it really is a thing of beauty.
Introducing my gf to my parents is another matter. No matter how many times I describe what my gf is, how pretty she is, how she makes me laugh, how we get along, how fun our dates are, it just doesn't compare to actually having parents and gf meet sometime, to get a real gauge, get a face-to-face interaction, even to just allow each other to see the human element of this concept of a gf. That's a pretty significant step, a situation where just seeing someone (worth a thousand words!) also gets trumped (Trump, that's a loaded word nowadays for better or worse) by the aura of the symbolism of the moment, the acknowledgement that someone is real and not just a concept that parents have held for a long time, to recognize that the gf exists and make the relationship real, that is worth more than maybe a thousand pictures (that's a Bobby-ism!)
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Elimination Tournament (かちぬきせん)
Elimination round playoffs are the best thing in sports. There's a reason college football fans were clamoring a few years ago for a playoff system like all the other sports (and why the BCS finally caved and awarded them with one): there's a primal emotion inside almost all men to have a playoff, winner-take-all, win-or-die elmination format. Not to be sexist, but I do think it has something to do with men in the course of history going into combat and fighting for their lives: either kill or be killed, the rigors of war. Men were historically those who had to go out there and expect to be the warriors representing their families, their country, their very existence. So I think it's in men's DNA to want an elimination tournament in sports (I know it doesn't totally figure since men are descended from men AND women, and genetics and all, but maybe men have that comative gene in the Y chromosome? I haven't really thought it out).
I was just watching the 2003 NBA playoffs Lakers v. Spurs Game 5 and Derek Fisher's last-second shot and that came to me: the joys of winning a close playoff game. The playoffs are just totally a different animal than a regular season game: the added element that the winner not only wins and moves one step closer to their goal of eventually being the champion, but the loser is out and lost forever. The loser has much more to lose because that's their only hope, while the winner still needs to beat other teams to make the result meaningful, but for the loser it's all over. That's why fans watch playoff games, and I love to be in competitive situations of playoff games: we know everyone is trying, no one wants to lose and watch their hope disperse, it gets more intense (I've yelled at a lot of refs during my time in playoff situations), a lot more is on the line. It is, essentially, the closest thing most non-military people, non-law enforcement, non-organized crime related people have to a do-or-die situation. Because most people don't have war to deal with, and their lives are not on the line, sports is the next closest thing, and really competitive people like myself feed on that adrenaline rush of pure competition (and the fact, I'm sure, that even if we do lose we don't ACTUALLY die, that we might get another chance). That's why I love elimination playoffs.
I kind of wish there was an elimination tournament-style playoffs for the Republican presidential nomination right, seems like there's too many cooks in the kitchen and it's allowing Donald Trump to continue leading the "race."
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
I was just watching the 2003 NBA playoffs Lakers v. Spurs Game 5 and Derek Fisher's last-second shot and that came to me: the joys of winning a close playoff game. The playoffs are just totally a different animal than a regular season game: the added element that the winner not only wins and moves one step closer to their goal of eventually being the champion, but the loser is out and lost forever. The loser has much more to lose because that's their only hope, while the winner still needs to beat other teams to make the result meaningful, but for the loser it's all over. That's why fans watch playoff games, and I love to be in competitive situations of playoff games: we know everyone is trying, no one wants to lose and watch their hope disperse, it gets more intense (I've yelled at a lot of refs during my time in playoff situations), a lot more is on the line. It is, essentially, the closest thing most non-military people, non-law enforcement, non-organized crime related people have to a do-or-die situation. Because most people don't have war to deal with, and their lives are not on the line, sports is the next closest thing, and really competitive people like myself feed on that adrenaline rush of pure competition (and the fact, I'm sure, that even if we do lose we don't ACTUALLY die, that we might get another chance). That's why I love elimination playoffs.
I kind of wish there was an elimination tournament-style playoffs for the Republican presidential nomination right, seems like there's too many cooks in the kitchen and it's allowing Donald Trump to continue leading the "race."
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Slip and Fall (滑り落ちる)
This past President's Day weekend (and Valentine's Day!) I went to Park City, Utah for a ski trip with my long-time law school friends (they say that once you've been friends with someone for 7 years you'll be friends with them for life). Salt Lake City surprisingly only has population of 190,000 people, kind of a oasis in the drab Mountain region of the United States, with not much on any side of it.
I must profess that I am not a good skier. I've never been very good at activites that involve balance, and skiing and skating and rollerblading all fit into that category. I also have a sort of mental block of not wanting to fall, preventing me from taking unnecessary risks which is good in a normal situation but difficult to get past in skiing. The whole idea is to go as fast as possible down a hill without crashing, then stop on a dime as fast as possible or turning through a bend. I may be a lot of things, but speed is not my game. Every time I go skiing, I do quite a bit of slip and falls (suberiochiru). Personally, I rather disagree with the premise of skiing (sorry skating friends!) The sports I like involve balls, like a football or dodgeball or some sort of marker to hone in the action on. Skiing, among other activities, doesn't involve a ball, there's no point system reinforcing one to continue pursuing the activity. The best possible outcome of the activity is that you get down the hill without incident and move on. Further, skiing is a rich person's game: much like golf (but without a golf), skiing takes massive amounts of equipment, with the right dry-fitting clothing, snowpants, headgear, ski mask so that the wind and snow don't blow up painfully into one's face), and finally, skis and poles (and now a helmet in play which I never saw before!) A lot of moving parts which are tough to get up a mountain, much less get together in case of a suberiochi (slip and fall). Plus it harbors sentiments related to deseration: if you suberochiru, you let down the group that you ski with, and possibly get deserted due to your slowness. It's easy to get hurt! I mean it's a mountain, with trees, and ice, and going down it at high speeds. Ripe for injury, thus developing the paradigm of "got hurt in a ski accident." I haven't gotten any major injuries yet from skiing (or anything), but they tell me life after 30 is different! For this and many other reasons, I believe I will no longer indulge in the sport of skiing any more. (Hanging up the poles, that's it!!!!)
Other observations on my trip:
- The Morman presence in Salt Lake City is pretty strong. We went to the Mormon Temple in center Salt Lake City and was fascinated by the culture there.
- I visited the Olympic Park used during the 2002 Winter Olympics. The bobsled/ luge course is INSANE!
- gas is cheaper in Utah and Texas. Seriously, like half the prices of California.
- Magic Mike/ Magic Mike XXL the sequel are not very good movies.
- We live in a society where a Supreme Court justice passes away unexpectedly, but the media and many presidential contenders respond by speculating about who the next justice is right away and how it will effect the Supreme Court. Sigh.
-Deer Valley and other "high class" ski resorts in Utah don't allow snowboarding (just skiing). Guess I'm retiring from snowboarding as well, not just skiing.
Spring has come in Los Angeles! 75 degrees all day with no clouds and a beautiful sunset that my GF and I enjoyed in Palos Verdes as a late-Valentine's Day date. Excellent day to walk around and be outside. That's why there's more people living in Culver City than Salt Lake City!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
I must profess that I am not a good skier. I've never been very good at activites that involve balance, and skiing and skating and rollerblading all fit into that category. I also have a sort of mental block of not wanting to fall, preventing me from taking unnecessary risks which is good in a normal situation but difficult to get past in skiing. The whole idea is to go as fast as possible down a hill without crashing, then stop on a dime as fast as possible or turning through a bend. I may be a lot of things, but speed is not my game. Every time I go skiing, I do quite a bit of slip and falls (suberiochiru). Personally, I rather disagree with the premise of skiing (sorry skating friends!) The sports I like involve balls, like a football or dodgeball or some sort of marker to hone in the action on. Skiing, among other activities, doesn't involve a ball, there's no point system reinforcing one to continue pursuing the activity. The best possible outcome of the activity is that you get down the hill without incident and move on. Further, skiing is a rich person's game: much like golf (but without a golf), skiing takes massive amounts of equipment, with the right dry-fitting clothing, snowpants, headgear, ski mask so that the wind and snow don't blow up painfully into one's face), and finally, skis and poles (and now a helmet in play which I never saw before!) A lot of moving parts which are tough to get up a mountain, much less get together in case of a suberiochi (slip and fall). Plus it harbors sentiments related to deseration: if you suberochiru, you let down the group that you ski with, and possibly get deserted due to your slowness. It's easy to get hurt! I mean it's a mountain, with trees, and ice, and going down it at high speeds. Ripe for injury, thus developing the paradigm of "got hurt in a ski accident." I haven't gotten any major injuries yet from skiing (or anything), but they tell me life after 30 is different! For this and many other reasons, I believe I will no longer indulge in the sport of skiing any more. (Hanging up the poles, that's it!!!!)
Other observations on my trip:
- The Morman presence in Salt Lake City is pretty strong. We went to the Mormon Temple in center Salt Lake City and was fascinated by the culture there.
- I visited the Olympic Park used during the 2002 Winter Olympics. The bobsled/ luge course is INSANE!
- gas is cheaper in Utah and Texas. Seriously, like half the prices of California.
- Magic Mike/ Magic Mike XXL the sequel are not very good movies.
- We live in a society where a Supreme Court justice passes away unexpectedly, but the media and many presidential contenders respond by speculating about who the next justice is right away and how it will effect the Supreme Court. Sigh.
-Deer Valley and other "high class" ski resorts in Utah don't allow snowboarding (just skiing). Guess I'm retiring from snowboarding as well, not just skiing.
Spring has come in Los Angeles! 75 degrees all day with no clouds and a beautiful sunset that my GF and I enjoyed in Palos Verdes as a late-Valentine's Day date. Excellent day to walk around and be outside. That's why there's more people living in Culver City than Salt Lake City!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
統計 (Statistics)
I love numbers. I like poring over baseball stats, over sales numbers, over Guiness Book of Records numbers, over stock market prices, over election coverage poll numbers. There have been plenty of characters in movies and TV who show an appreciation or affinity for numbers - Erin Brockovich, Yabushita Yoriko of a Japanese TV show I watch called "Date," The Rain Man, and many more. Count me in as one of those who loves numbers.
To me, numbers (and statistics, despite the old adage of "there's lies, damn lies, and statistics) tell a better story about an event than just mere anecdote. The poll numbers tell a better story about the 2016 election than just merely "Trump is winning," (surprisingly still in Republican voting). Tonight his win in the New Hampshire primary was convincing, but there were so many other Republican candidates out there that his margin may be misleading, and the numbers for Kasich, Jeb Bush, Cruz, and Rubio all spell out a very interesting story and is a summation of all their campaign efforts in the state. I can use the numbers to see how candidates did before and how they're doing now,
Statistics factor so heavily into fantasy sports, but especially fantasy baseball. Not only are there the season totals of a player that go hand in hand with a player (I don't even think of a player anymore without associating him with a certain set of numbers, like a .300-30-100 player - i.e., .300 batting average, 30 home runs, and 100 RBI) but also nowadays so many other statistics like strand rate, home run rate, BABIP (batting average on balls in play) that delve much deeper into how a player is actually performing. It's tremendous the amount of data that can be gathered from baseball just because of how many repetitions there are (so many pitches in a given game) but also the different aspects of one single play (on a given play, the pitcher's pitch location can be tracked, the speed of the pitch, the movement of the pitch, the alignment of the defense, the swing rate by the batter, the area where the ball gets put into play, etc. etc.) This is where the world of big data comes in, reported nicely by a book called "Big Data Baseball," a story of the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates. A great read about how the Pirates simply used numbers that were better indicators of results to game the system and improve their team without spending. Absolutely my dream scenario for my fantasy baseball teams as well as building my
I've always been fascinated by the relationship between fantasy baseball and the numbers. One of the areas I wanted to explore is how the pure numbers get put together to assess a player's value. In standard fantasy baseball leagues, the statistics tracked are Runs, Home runs, RBI, Stolen Bases, and batting average for hitters (5), and Wins, ERA, WHIP, Saves, and Strikeouts (5) for pitchers. However, each of these categories weights one counting stat (or ratio stat) differently than others, like 1 win for a player is not worth the same as 1 strikeout, because there are so many strikeouts that that one K can be lost in the shuffle, whereas wins are much more scarce. How do we rank a player's value (much less his future value based on the assessed information) if all these categories are all jumbled and weighted differently? I guess you have to give some sort of weight variable to each category, come up with something like 11.5 strikeouts = 1 win or something. Even more confusing, though, are the ratio stats, ERA, WHIP, and BA. How do we measure a player's impact on those if they pitch different amounts of innings and have different weighted impacts on those ratio-based categories? Like a reliever's 100 IP of 1.00 ERA can be very valuable, but is it more valuable than a starter's 200 IP of 2.00 ERA? I'm not sure, because 2.00 ERA is still helpful, and you get more of it, whereas 1.00 ERA is more helpful but less impactful due to the volume. I think one also has to figure out the median or replacement value of the averages so that there's a baseline of how much one's positive value impacts the replacement value/median. It's all very confusing but fascinating to me at the same time, and a big reason I play fantasy baseball/ basketball. Sure it's exciting to watch one's player have a dominating start or hit a home run, but even more thrilling for me is to measure what impact that has on my chances of winning and how valuable that great start or that home run was.
At heart, I think I'm just a big numbers nerd who likes to crunch numbers and act smart.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
To me, numbers (and statistics, despite the old adage of "there's lies, damn lies, and statistics) tell a better story about an event than just mere anecdote. The poll numbers tell a better story about the 2016 election than just merely "Trump is winning," (surprisingly still in Republican voting). Tonight his win in the New Hampshire primary was convincing, but there were so many other Republican candidates out there that his margin may be misleading, and the numbers for Kasich, Jeb Bush, Cruz, and Rubio all spell out a very interesting story and is a summation of all their campaign efforts in the state. I can use the numbers to see how candidates did before and how they're doing now,
Statistics factor so heavily into fantasy sports, but especially fantasy baseball. Not only are there the season totals of a player that go hand in hand with a player (I don't even think of a player anymore without associating him with a certain set of numbers, like a .300-30-100 player - i.e., .300 batting average, 30 home runs, and 100 RBI) but also nowadays so many other statistics like strand rate, home run rate, BABIP (batting average on balls in play) that delve much deeper into how a player is actually performing. It's tremendous the amount of data that can be gathered from baseball just because of how many repetitions there are (so many pitches in a given game) but also the different aspects of one single play (on a given play, the pitcher's pitch location can be tracked, the speed of the pitch, the movement of the pitch, the alignment of the defense, the swing rate by the batter, the area where the ball gets put into play, etc. etc.) This is where the world of big data comes in, reported nicely by a book called "Big Data Baseball," a story of the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates. A great read about how the Pirates simply used numbers that were better indicators of results to game the system and improve their team without spending. Absolutely my dream scenario for my fantasy baseball teams as well as building my
I've always been fascinated by the relationship between fantasy baseball and the numbers. One of the areas I wanted to explore is how the pure numbers get put together to assess a player's value. In standard fantasy baseball leagues, the statistics tracked are Runs, Home runs, RBI, Stolen Bases, and batting average for hitters (5), and Wins, ERA, WHIP, Saves, and Strikeouts (5) for pitchers. However, each of these categories weights one counting stat (or ratio stat) differently than others, like 1 win for a player is not worth the same as 1 strikeout, because there are so many strikeouts that that one K can be lost in the shuffle, whereas wins are much more scarce. How do we rank a player's value (much less his future value based on the assessed information) if all these categories are all jumbled and weighted differently? I guess you have to give some sort of weight variable to each category, come up with something like 11.5 strikeouts = 1 win or something. Even more confusing, though, are the ratio stats, ERA, WHIP, and BA. How do we measure a player's impact on those if they pitch different amounts of innings and have different weighted impacts on those ratio-based categories? Like a reliever's 100 IP of 1.00 ERA can be very valuable, but is it more valuable than a starter's 200 IP of 2.00 ERA? I'm not sure, because 2.00 ERA is still helpful, and you get more of it, whereas 1.00 ERA is more helpful but less impactful due to the volume. I think one also has to figure out the median or replacement value of the averages so that there's a baseline of how much one's positive value impacts the replacement value/median. It's all very confusing but fascinating to me at the same time, and a big reason I play fantasy baseball/ basketball. Sure it's exciting to watch one's player have a dominating start or hit a home run, but even more thrilling for me is to measure what impact that has on my chances of winning and how valuable that great start or that home run was.
At heart, I think I'm just a big numbers nerd who likes to crunch numbers and act smart.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Fear of Missing Out (逃す恐怖症)
Fear of heights, fear of snakes, fear of spiders, fear of tight spaces, fear of the number 13, there's a lot of phobias that exist in the world.....the Japanese (and I'm sure a lot of other Asian countries) have a taijinkyoufushou, 対人恐怖症, or fear of embarrassing oneself in front of others. A sad life, that, always worrying about what others think of them and whatnot.
One specific culture phenomenon (and phobia) going around among my generation nowadays (damn millennials!) is FOMO, or fear of missing out, which describes being unable to go to a party or social gathering but then being worried that one is missing a good time, with their friends or whatnot. This is understandable, as some people want to live it up, think that one should live every day like it's their last, and whatnot.
I have the opposite of FOMO. I have the fear of wasting my time. Don't get me wrong, friends! I (usually) enjoy your company and a good time is had by all, but I have an irrational fear of going somewhere and wasting 4 hours. A friend's birthday party could be 4 hours (depending on the night), a day trip to Orange County could be the whole day, and a Vegas weekend could be.....the whole weekend! I constantly worry about using up my time unwisely and not getting the maximum utility out of those hours allotted. It's not even that I'm worried about work or big, stressful events in my life....I'm just worried those hours doing something could be spent doing something else. It's gotten so bad sometimes I can never watch certain movies because I wonder if there's another movie I should be watching that I'm getting more enjoyment out of. Which, in a way, IS kind of like FOMO....I'm worried about missing out on a different activity. It might need a new name...like Fear of Missing Out on Unnamed Other Activity (FOMOOUOA).
Any prescriptions for this horrible disease, FOMOUOA..... I just have to take a deep breath sometimes and allot myself some free time every week, like Saturday night, put 4 hours of guilt-free, do-whatever-you-want in. Which is what I'm gonna do now.
Happy Super Bowl Watching! (For some reason I'm thinking the Sheriff, aka Peyton Manning, rides off into the sunset on his last game ever with the Super Bowl Ring. Crazier things have happened.)
Happy Chinese New Year! Year of the Monkey! I still get red bags (bags full of cash) from my parents every year at New Year's cuz I'm unmarried, which is kind of an incentive NOT to get married actually, not sure if Chinese traditions thought that one through....but hey, I'm enjoying it while I can!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
One specific culture phenomenon (and phobia) going around among my generation nowadays (damn millennials!) is FOMO, or fear of missing out, which describes being unable to go to a party or social gathering but then being worried that one is missing a good time, with their friends or whatnot. This is understandable, as some people want to live it up, think that one should live every day like it's their last, and whatnot.
I have the opposite of FOMO. I have the fear of wasting my time. Don't get me wrong, friends! I (usually) enjoy your company and a good time is had by all, but I have an irrational fear of going somewhere and wasting 4 hours. A friend's birthday party could be 4 hours (depending on the night), a day trip to Orange County could be the whole day, and a Vegas weekend could be.....the whole weekend! I constantly worry about using up my time unwisely and not getting the maximum utility out of those hours allotted. It's not even that I'm worried about work or big, stressful events in my life....I'm just worried those hours doing something could be spent doing something else. It's gotten so bad sometimes I can never watch certain movies because I wonder if there's another movie I should be watching that I'm getting more enjoyment out of. Which, in a way, IS kind of like FOMO....I'm worried about missing out on a different activity. It might need a new name...like Fear of Missing Out on Unnamed Other Activity (FOMOOUOA).
Any prescriptions for this horrible disease, FOMOUOA..... I just have to take a deep breath sometimes and allot myself some free time every week, like Saturday night, put 4 hours of guilt-free, do-whatever-you-want in. Which is what I'm gonna do now.
Happy Super Bowl Watching! (For some reason I'm thinking the Sheriff, aka Peyton Manning, rides off into the sunset on his last game ever with the Super Bowl Ring. Crazier things have happened.)
Happy Chinese New Year! Year of the Monkey! I still get red bags (bags full of cash) from my parents every year at New Year's cuz I'm unmarried, which is kind of an incentive NOT to get married actually, not sure if Chinese traditions thought that one through....but hey, I'm enjoying it while I can!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Sacrifice (犠牲- ぎせい)
Today is friends' day, a brilliant artificial construct by Facebook to celebrate everyone's friends.....and also for facebook to create videos for everyone on their social network. They're not bad videos......using the pictures that people take of themselves, find pics of friends, etc. I do celebrate having friends and being liked by others/ liking others who share the same interest or values, but it's often glossed over the cost of having friends...the sacrifice.
In life, sacrifices need to be made, inherently. Almost every decision one makes is sacrificing something else...the choice to eat pizza one day sacrifices the ability to eat noodles for that same meal. The decision to write in this blog right now sacrifices my ability to do something else in this span of time. Obviously some decisions are bigger than others, and most sacrifices aren't that costly.
In dodgeball, one often has to sacrifice themselves to help the team: you put yourself in the line of fire to protect a more important teammate, or you take the shot at the opposing team's best player while putting yourself in the line of fire. Often though, people don't want to take the sacrifice: they'll do little things to help themselves like hold a ball to block, dodging out the way but blocking the line of vision for people behind them, thus making them get hit; not going for catches in order to keep oneself alive. These are not good statistical decisions; the better strategy in dodgeball is to take the sacrifice, to help the team at the expense of oneself, because the team is more important. The lesson is: sometimes sacrifices do need to be made.
As I grow older, I find myself subconsciously making decisions just because I know the consequences now, and force myself to make consequences; instead of reading over a fantasy baseball article for the whole morning, I force myself to concentrate more on the task at hand. Instead of kicking back and playing a video game for 3 hours, I watch a Japanese movie to further strengthen my language skills while still getting some gratification from the plot of that movie, just not as much as a video game. These are the sacrifices that need to be made to be successful in life, and then sometimes the reverse sacrifice is made: I need to sacrifice some income/ work in order to let loose, capitalize on life, grasp what's in front of me before I lose it.
I think the ultimate sacrifice, which I haven't gotten to yet: settling down and raising and family/ having kids. People in older generations (like in China, where my parents had me) kind of did this naturally, just without thinking, because it was just something to do: you grow up, you have kids. But in the society I live in today and in America, it's not so simple: settling down means leaving behind an incredibly cushy singles life, of doing anything I want whenever I want, of having cars drive me to wherever, to scheduling things last minute and being spontaneous. Having a family as ominous as it sounds (ultimate sacrifice sounds like giving one's life) IS actually giving up a way of life and moving on to a new form of life, a combined life with one's partner and one's family. Eventually I will have to make that sacrifice, but when will it come? I'm starting to get an idea now. Maybe I should have played more video games before that time comes.
Regardless of the way in which people sacrifice, it's important to realize both the cost one is giving up but the benefit of one's pleasure. After all, they wouldn't call it "sacrifice" if there was no worthy cause as a result of the sacrifice, they'd just call it, "wasting one's money/time." So sacrifice! Embrace it, live it, own it.
Just not in fantasy baseball, where the lesson is NEVER to lay down sacrifice bunts and freely give up an out and take oneself out a big inning. And ESPECIALLY not one of the players we own, almost the worst thing fantasy owners can hope for.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
In life, sacrifices need to be made, inherently. Almost every decision one makes is sacrificing something else...the choice to eat pizza one day sacrifices the ability to eat noodles for that same meal. The decision to write in this blog right now sacrifices my ability to do something else in this span of time. Obviously some decisions are bigger than others, and most sacrifices aren't that costly.
In dodgeball, one often has to sacrifice themselves to help the team: you put yourself in the line of fire to protect a more important teammate, or you take the shot at the opposing team's best player while putting yourself in the line of fire. Often though, people don't want to take the sacrifice: they'll do little things to help themselves like hold a ball to block, dodging out the way but blocking the line of vision for people behind them, thus making them get hit; not going for catches in order to keep oneself alive. These are not good statistical decisions; the better strategy in dodgeball is to take the sacrifice, to help the team at the expense of oneself, because the team is more important. The lesson is: sometimes sacrifices do need to be made.
As I grow older, I find myself subconsciously making decisions just because I know the consequences now, and force myself to make consequences; instead of reading over a fantasy baseball article for the whole morning, I force myself to concentrate more on the task at hand. Instead of kicking back and playing a video game for 3 hours, I watch a Japanese movie to further strengthen my language skills while still getting some gratification from the plot of that movie, just not as much as a video game. These are the sacrifices that need to be made to be successful in life, and then sometimes the reverse sacrifice is made: I need to sacrifice some income/ work in order to let loose, capitalize on life, grasp what's in front of me before I lose it.
I think the ultimate sacrifice, which I haven't gotten to yet: settling down and raising and family/ having kids. People in older generations (like in China, where my parents had me) kind of did this naturally, just without thinking, because it was just something to do: you grow up, you have kids. But in the society I live in today and in America, it's not so simple: settling down means leaving behind an incredibly cushy singles life, of doing anything I want whenever I want, of having cars drive me to wherever, to scheduling things last minute and being spontaneous. Having a family as ominous as it sounds (ultimate sacrifice sounds like giving one's life) IS actually giving up a way of life and moving on to a new form of life, a combined life with one's partner and one's family. Eventually I will have to make that sacrifice, but when will it come? I'm starting to get an idea now. Maybe I should have played more video games before that time comes.
Regardless of the way in which people sacrifice, it's important to realize both the cost one is giving up but the benefit of one's pleasure. After all, they wouldn't call it "sacrifice" if there was no worthy cause as a result of the sacrifice, they'd just call it, "wasting one's money/time." So sacrifice! Embrace it, live it, own it.
Just not in fantasy baseball, where the lesson is NEVER to lay down sacrifice bunts and freely give up an out and take oneself out a big inning. And ESPECIALLY not one of the players we own, almost the worst thing fantasy owners can hope for.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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