birdog1960

no, I understand. I've seen the play: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=don+quixote+youtube+to+dream&view=detail&mid=3F2ADDC628EE74D67AE93F2ADDC628EE74D67AE9&FORM=VIRE

no, dummy. a vote for someone with zero chance of ever winning the presidency is a wasted vote.

wow. big tent, happy family. not. the republican establishment has been dysfunctional for the last 8-16 years because it bears no resemblance to the functional, usually pragmatic and reasonable republican party of the past. members of that "establishment" are now branded rino's and run off.

and in that way, you won't waste your vote. hmmm....

good. but who would you vote for if you lived in ohio?

and whom are you voting for? and you?

i am. i supported bernie.

except that bernie is actually a decent human that cares about americans and says what he believes to be the truth. of course that would never play among the 50% of the repub party that find trump appealing. these are not desirable attributes to those that want to be told what they wishfully believe to be the truth. "if only all those foreigners were gone, america would be great again. i'd have a $25/hour middle class job and a pension". bernie,s contention that concentration of wealth is the problem is backed by plenty of data. it's indisputable. could he change it? probably not but many dems are looking for truth speakers. repubs, not so much. yes, many, many americans are sick and tired of the status quo. but the outlier they choose as an alternative says much about them and the party they affiliate with. and they repub pols that empowered them. how many have been featured at cpac? how many senators, congressmen or prez candidates from the right have gone on their show? how many have called them out for their lunacy and rabble rousing?

oh, come on. the GOP is doing a fine job of wrecking itself. trump just exposed all the idiots. with the number of morons that are being suckered by this flim flam man comprising almost 1/2 the party, it's a wonder it didn't fall apart sooner. it's also a shame, actually.

umm, no. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/why-is-donald-trump-begging-for-money-as-if-hes-broke/487976/ In a first for a major party nominee, Mr. Trump has suggested he will leave the crucial task of field organizing in swing states to the Republican National Committee, which typically relies on the party’s nominee to help fund, direct and staff national Republican political efforts. His decision threatens to leave the party with significant shortfalls of money and manpower: On Monday, the party reported raising $13 million during May, about a third of the money it raised in May 2012, when Mitt Romney led the ticket. No wonder some Republican Party insiders are making another late push to dump Trump as the GOP nominee: They were expecting a Sugar Daddy and got a moocher.

yes, but what happens to him in about 7 years after he's been chewed up and spit out by the league when so many nfl players are broke and permanently broken?

shouldn't this observation result in nearly all coaches playing the percentages? what explains the fact that so many don't? an interesting analysis of the 2 point question: (the same site has an article on a 3rd generation program that calculates when to attempt 2 points versus PAT) http://archive.advancedfootballanalytics.com/2010/12/almost-always-go-for-2-point.html bear in mind, this was before the percentages for PAT's dropped from the rule change.

no, good luck on roethllsberger. never pinned him for a sharp tool. everything is relative. it's encouraging.

actually, i think it is exactly that. there will be an outlier coach. and if he's right, he's the next walsh. if he's wrong he's the next....? mediocre wanna be?

being "cautious" does not often equate to statistical probabilities. if it did, every cautious person would be driving a subaru with the robotic safety features. as it is most don't. there are plenty of $hitty, dangerous cars sold every day. people, businesses and gov't often don't follow what is , in retrospect, the most efficient course. those that dare to predict those courses are generally the most successful. how do you know it isn't broken until somebody moves the goal posts and shows that it is? it's better to move the goal posts than try to adjust to the move. watch them move.

is it any wonder the dumb jock mantra rolls on?

why would I do that? there are dudes employed and highly educated to do just those analyses. the steelers have probably already done them. yet the specific instances and their outcomes are not predicted by the statistics. the long term results are. but you knew that... in my field, there is the same reticence among many to utilize algorithms. sometimes they don't make sense as the problem is too complex for a one size fits all approach. but often they do make sense and outcomes are substantially improved, reproducibly by their use. still there are those that claim they or their specific populations are different and don't apply. they believe are special. I believe this all comes from the same part of human nature. we pretend to refuse to believe that we can be replaced by equations, computers etc. the fact is that many times we can be. the bias will almost always be on looking at anecdotes that supposedly disprove this.

yes, but if the overall point differential is positive for attempting more 2 point conversions the converse will more frequently result. my argument was that 1 point is not limited in importance by the final score alone. but you knew that. over the course of a season, more points for are better. agreed?

agreed. but most, if not all scenarios could be anticipated and the move most likely to result in a win chosen by an algorithm. that algorithm is going to result in a large overall increase in 2 point attempts.. the problem will again be going off script. the coaches will need to be consistent with it for the numbers to play out. I don't believe most will be. they'll go by their gut at crunch time when they need the analytics most.

not nearly a large enough sample size to be meaningful based on wins. my point re the bills experience was that missed PAT's have frequently change strategy over the many games over many years. it has turned many ho hum games into nail biters often with negative consequences..ie: 1 point is often meaningful to a game.

I don't believe it's that straight forward. if the team scoring a 2 point conversion in a game goes up by 4 instead of 3, it would very likely change the decision making of the opponent making them go for a td rather than an fg with more chance for failure (and ultimately more chance of losing). there are many scenarios where an extra point means more than just the differential of the final score. this is just one example. as evidence, how many times as bills fans have we seen a missed extra point change strategy and outcome? the one thing that I hope everyone can agree upon is that more points for a team are better and overall will lead to more wins. if 2 pt conversions can be definitively shown to produce more points over the long term, they will produce more wins over the long term.

i'd say with that kind of accuracy one would want the most possible draft picks. every year. and the actual placing would be less important than than quantity. so trading away draft picks for a "sure thing"or using a high draft pick that supposedly no one else will trade up for on an injured player would be a generally silly approach.

based on your unabashed and very strongly stated opinion that your pick would have been jack. are you a statistician? did you personally scout jack? do you employ an analyst to help you in these matters? do you have a long proven track record of success in draft picking? it's a fair bet the answers are no. there are certainly humans that possess extraordinary skills at evaluating football talent. bill polian was such a person. he could have been even better with the help of data crunchers and i'll bet he'd have happily used any leg up he could get as long as it was legal. I don't think the bills currently possess anyone with near his skills in this regard. and that's based on...wait for it...outcomes.

my giving you a name would be equivalent to the seat of the pants approach that I despise and seems so prevalent, at least among the lesser teams in the league. why would I guess? if I were in the same situation I would use every evidence based objective measure and tool available. i'm pretty confident you wouldn't. you seem pretty confident in your own innate ability to make the best pick. there lies the difference in our arguments.

unlike others here, I don't pretend to be an expert analyst of either player talent or methodologies available to value such talent (which unlike generalities about statistics and cursory, superficial observations of data like your recent post) are quite involved. it seems self evident that an injury to a player that will remove him for approx. 1/6 of the average career of an nfl player seems a big gamble. I strongly suspect algorithms designed to measure just such likelihoods would have offered several better bets in statistical terms to draft in the same situation..