Reminder: Complete first draft of quantitative vs. qualitative essay. Due 21:00 Tuesday 4月7日, 1000-1200 words. I will read it in Google Docs, so all you need to do to alert me that you're finished is change the title from:
Essay 1 (Student): "Your Title Here"
to
Essay 1d (Student): "An Actual Title Here"
I hope the laboratory session was useful today. I did not have time to look at your developing essays on Wednesday night after class, but I will look at them on Thursday night, and at various points over the holiday.
Each of your papers is different and presents different challenges for writing, but I realized their were two confusions today that most students had.
The first was a confusion created by the Graff & Birkenstein textbook. They show you they say / I say moves that could be used in sentences. Call them small moves. Today I was showing you they say / I say moves that could be used in paragraphs or in entire essays. Call them big moves. Really they are quite the same, but maybe I should have said so specifically.
The second was a confusion created by my outline template. I made it look like the I say had equal weight in your essay, or that you had to make an I say argument in each paragraph. This is not the case. As you can see from my specific instructions yesterday, each of your papers has a few different theys, and there are many options for where to insert your I, and how much.
You can see from my comments in the laboratory session that I like to give lots of advice, but no rules. I am like the doctor who says "take two of these pills and tell me if you feel better." So don't be concerned you are breaking a rule. Like for instance I advised one student to move the Moneyball comparison to the end of the paper. I break my own rules! But I am not leaving you in an ocean of confusion, because I will help you all along. (I can get my American students to trust me like this, but then they all become lawyers and ask me how can I grade fairly if every student is really writing a different essay with different rules and different process. A somewhat interesting question, but I usually respond by asking which is more important, a deviation in your grade that might be something like plus or minus 2%, or you being better at writing?)
Which reminds me, we must finish our discussion of "writing class experiences"! We'll do it in the first Blink session. Have a safe and happy holiday and see you soon.
Bonus: Dynamic "team payroll" vs. "team performance" visualization for Major League Baseball season 2009.
Bonus: Another visualization... this one is Charles Darwin's process of editing the six editions of Origin of Species. Wow!
Bonus: Baseball neo-traditionalist Bill Simmons apologizes and joins the statistical revolution. I say neo-traditionalist because he's only 40 years old and he's known for using edgy humor rather than for 'old man' nostalgia. But this is still an important development. Here is the key quotation: "It's too easy to be informed these days. Takes a lot less time than you might think." Simmons had argued in previous years that he thought the new statistics removed the fun and the aesthetic beauty from baseball; he compared them to "calculus homework." Now he feels (like Bill James and others) that they enhance fun and beauty.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Homework for Lab #1 (Wednesday, 3月31日）
-Read They Say / I Say 42-50
-Create new Google Doc shared with 老師 and complete outline exercise (by Tuesday at 17:00!)
Bonus: Heavenball? A scientific view of "near death experiences."
Bonus: Be glad I didn't give you a summary exercise on this article. It's a bizarre mix of cliches and contradictions about what makes a winning baseball player. I'll try: "Winning baseball players have a special quality? What is it? To find this quality, we talked to winning baseball players. The quality is a winner's mentality, which we can see by the fact that they win." Huh?
-Create new Google Doc shared with 老師 and complete outline exercise (by Tuesday at 17:00!)
Bonus: Heavenball? A scientific view of "near death experiences."
Bonus: Be glad I didn't give you a summary exercise on this article. It's a bizarre mix of cliches and contradictions about what makes a winning baseball player. I'll try: "Winning baseball players have a special quality? What is it? To find this quality, we talked to winning baseball players. The quality is a winner's mentality, which we can see by the fact that they win." Huh?
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Homework for Class #3 (Wednesday, 3月24日）
Great work in yesterday's session! I feel the class is off to a good start now.
Reminder: Read Moneyball from middle of 頁192 - top of 頁205, top of 頁206 - bottom of 頁217, bottom of 頁234 - middle of 頁257, middle of 頁258 - bottom of 頁280 (We will skip a few more player biographies, principally that of Chad Bradford. We will skip the humorous/sentimental epilogue about Jeremy Brown. And we will skip Lewis complaining in the "afterword" about sports journalists who misunderstand his book; implicitly he is comparing them to the dumber traditionalist GMs like Phillips, Minaya, Williams, and Sabean).
Reminder: Read They Say / I Say 30-40
Reminder: Please complete the "debate about student grades" exercise on the previous post... 13 of 13 students have now commented.
Reminder: Please buy Blink from the campus bookstore!
Bonus: We haven't discussed the use of advanced statistics in sports other than baseball, so here is an interesting example. (Wake Forest is where I did my B.A. degree.)
13. (Martin) Philosophical question: what is the purpose of a baseball team?
---
14 (Elsa) . If I told you that Billy Beane's two closest professional disciples (Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi) both failed as general managers, are there any clues in "The Trading Desk" chapter that could help you theorize why?
---
15. (Catherine) Once the "student grade debate" exercise is complete, change all of the "says" verbs in each entry to better verbs from the list on 頁39-40. (You can't change the original postings, so just copy them and re-post them with better verbs.)
---
16a. (Cathy) In the concluding chapters of Moneyball, Michael Lewis presents an indirect defense of the intuitive or non-quantitative side of baseball. Consider the contrast between the experience of the players and that of the G.M. which you see in "The Trading Desk." Or the contrast between Beane's theories and his own practice. Or the description of the crazy game in "The Human Element" (I saw this on TV at the time and was jumping out of my seat!) Or the intriguing quotation on 頁248 that contends that "every player" is a "sample size [of] one." Give a "closest cliche summary" for Lewis' general argument here. (Maybe pretend you are Joe Morgan?)
---
16b (Doll). Instead of a "closest cliche summary," give a "list summary."
---
16c. (Alice) Instead of those two bad summaries, give a fair, complex, and commanding (but brief) summary of the kind that Graff & Birkenstein advocate.
---
16d. (Kim). Instead of those other kinds, give a "satirical summary" that presents Lewis' true logic but makes it sound ridiculous. (You might imagine yourself as a strong anti-intuitionist like DePodesta or McCracken.)
Reminder: Read Moneyball from middle of 頁192 - top of 頁205, top of 頁206 - bottom of 頁217, bottom of 頁234 - middle of 頁257, middle of 頁258 - bottom of 頁280 (We will skip a few more player biographies, principally that of Chad Bradford. We will skip the humorous/sentimental epilogue about Jeremy Brown. And we will skip Lewis complaining in the "afterword" about sports journalists who misunderstand his book; implicitly he is comparing them to the dumber traditionalist GMs like Phillips, Minaya, Williams, and Sabean).
Reminder: Read They Say / I Say 30-40
Reminder: Please complete the "debate about student grades" exercise on the previous post... 13 of 13 students have now commented.
Reminder: Please buy Blink from the campus bookstore!
Bonus: We haven't discussed the use of advanced statistics in sports other than baseball, so here is an interesting example. (Wake Forest is where I did my B.A. degree.)
13. (Martin) Philosophical question: what is the purpose of a baseball team?
---
14 (Elsa) . If I told you that Billy Beane's two closest professional disciples (Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi) both failed as general managers, are there any clues in "The Trading Desk" chapter that could help you theorize why?
---
15. (Catherine) Once the "student grade debate" exercise is complete, change all of the "says" verbs in each entry to better verbs from the list on 頁39-40. (You can't change the original postings, so just copy them and re-post them with better verbs.)
---
16a. (Cathy) In the concluding chapters of Moneyball, Michael Lewis presents an indirect defense of the intuitive or non-quantitative side of baseball. Consider the contrast between the experience of the players and that of the G.M. which you see in "The Trading Desk." Or the contrast between Beane's theories and his own practice. Or the description of the crazy game in "The Human Element" (I saw this on TV at the time and was jumping out of my seat!) Or the intriguing quotation on 頁248 that contends that "every player" is a "sample size [of] one." Give a "closest cliche summary" for Lewis' general argument here. (Maybe pretend you are Joe Morgan?)
---
16b (Doll). Instead of a "closest cliche summary," give a "list summary."
---
16c. (Alice) Instead of those two bad summaries, give a fair, complex, and commanding (but brief) summary of the kind that Graff & Birkenstein advocate.
---
16d. (Kim). Instead of those other kinds, give a "satirical summary" that presents Lewis' true logic but makes it sound ridiculous. (You might imagine yourself as a strong anti-intuitionist like DePodesta or McCracken.)
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Homework for Class #2 (Wednesday, 3月17日）
It was nice to meet all of you yesterday! I apologize if the introduction at the start of class was repetitious, but I wanted to make sure we were all "on the same page."
The reading assignment for next week is:
-They Say / I Say 頁19 - middle of 頁28
-Moneyball 頁97- bottom of 頁148, top of 頁152 - middle of 頁157 (The major part I'm deleting is about Scott Hatteberg, whom Lewis features as the type of "the intellectual/scientific baseball player.")
8 (Peter). In Moneyball, Billy Beane finds undervalued players who generate high offensive "on base percentage" and avoids athletic players who are overvalued for their skills at defense. But six years later in the year 2010, he is now buying players who are superior defenders, even if they have lower o.b.p. Explain why (there are two reasons).
9 (Doll). Use the first template on 頁26 of G&B to write a "they say" that compares Billy Beane's theories to the following statement by "Hall of Fame" baseball legend Joe Morgan (who is now a television analyst). The guy that wrote Moneyball can't teach me about the game... If you haven't been on the field, why should I read your book? How can that person teach me about the game? I learn plenty about the game everyday. Every Sunday night I learn something. The game changes almost every day. But I'm still not going to read Moneyball or books written by people who haven't been on the field or really experienced what goes on in the game of baseball... I learned from the best, the legends who played the game. I played alongside so many great players. I'm just not going to read a book in hopes of learning how to play baseball. But this is an everchanging game and I do learn something almost every day. I'm just a former baseball player who is now an analyst. My thoughts are about the game and not technologies and such. Just because somebody writes a book doesn't mean they know the game.
10 (Alice). If I told you that several of the high school players Lewis mentions in Moneyball (e.g. Melvin "B.J." Upton, Scott Kazmir, Zach Greinke) achieved great success in baseball, while many of the college players he mentions (e.g. Jeremy Brown, Luke Hagerty, Ben Fritz, Robert Brownlie, Stephen Obenchain, Bill Murphy, John McCurdy, Steve Stanley, John Baker, Mark Kiger, Brian Stavisky, Shaun Larkin, Brian Colamarino) were great failures , does this invalidate the theory argued by Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta, that drafting college players is more efficient? Why or why not?
11 (Martin). Lewis describes two fields of human enterprise in which quantitative approaches have replaced or are replacing intuitive approaches: financial trading and baseball management. Give an example of another field in which this transition has taken place, is in the process of taking place, or has not taken place (but could). Explain in detail.
12 (Tiara). Let us discuss another labor market somewhat similar to the baseball "draft." Do you think university grades efficiently measure students' intellectual achievement and potential? If you were the hiring manager for a company/organization, would you consider the university grades of your job applicants? How important would they be in making your hiring decision? Start with one of the "implied argument" templates on 頁25 to say what is commonly thought about grades. Then you can agree or disagree with the common thought.
The reading assignment for next week is:
-They Say / I Say 頁19 - middle of 頁28
-Moneyball 頁97- bottom of 頁148, top of 頁152 - middle of 頁157 (The major part I'm deleting is about Scott Hatteberg, whom Lewis features as the type of "the intellectual/scientific baseball player.")
8 (Peter). In Moneyball, Billy Beane finds undervalued players who generate high offensive "on base percentage" and avoids athletic players who are overvalued for their skills at defense. But six years later in the year 2010, he is now buying players who are superior defenders, even if they have lower o.b.p. Explain why (there are two reasons).
9 (Doll). Use the first template on 頁26 of G&B to write a "they say" that compares Billy Beane's theories to the following statement by "Hall of Fame" baseball legend Joe Morgan (who is now a television analyst). The guy that wrote Moneyball can't teach me about the game... If you haven't been on the field, why should I read your book? How can that person teach me about the game? I learn plenty about the game everyday. Every Sunday night I learn something. The game changes almost every day. But I'm still not going to read Moneyball or books written by people who haven't been on the field or really experienced what goes on in the game of baseball... I learned from the best, the legends who played the game. I played alongside so many great players. I'm just not going to read a book in hopes of learning how to play baseball. But this is an everchanging game and I do learn something almost every day. I'm just a former baseball player who is now an analyst. My thoughts are about the game and not technologies and such. Just because somebody writes a book doesn't mean they know the game.
10 (Alice). If I told you that several of the high school players Lewis mentions in Moneyball (e.g. Melvin "B.J." Upton, Scott Kazmir, Zach Greinke) achieved great success in baseball, while many of the college players he mentions (e.g. Jeremy Brown, Luke Hagerty, Ben Fritz, Robert Brownlie, Stephen Obenchain, Bill Murphy, John McCurdy, Steve Stanley, John Baker, Mark Kiger, Brian Stavisky, Shaun Larkin, Brian Colamarino) were great failures , does this invalidate the theory argued by Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta, that drafting college players is more efficient? Why or why not?
11 (Martin). Lewis describes two fields of human enterprise in which quantitative approaches have replaced or are replacing intuitive approaches: financial trading and baseball management. Give an example of another field in which this transition has taken place, is in the process of taking place, or has not taken place (but could). Explain in detail.
12 (Tiara). Let us discuss another labor market somewhat similar to the baseball "draft." Do you think university grades efficiently measure students' intellectual achievement and potential? If you were the hiring manager for a company/organization, would you consider the university grades of your job applicants? How important would they be in making your hiring decision? Start with one of the "implied argument" templates on 頁25 to say what is commonly thought about grades. Then you can agree or disagree with the common thought.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Homework for Class #1 (Wednesday, 3月10日）
-Buy They Say / I Say from NTHU bookstore (or elsewhere)
-Buy Moneyball from NTHU bookstore (or elsewhere)
-Read They Say / I Say 頁1- bottom of 頁11 and the "Putting in Your Oar" section on 頁13-14.
-Read Moneyball 頁6-42, middle of 頁54- bottom of 頁63, bottom of 頁69 - bottom of 頁72, top of 頁76 to bottom of 頁78, top of頁82 - middle of 頁85, bottom of 頁89 - bottom of 頁96. (The parts I removed just tell you more about how Billy Beane never lived up to his promise as a baseball player, and more about how Bill James developed an important theory of baseball statistics that was largely unknown until the 1990s.)
Pages for 中文 edition if you borrow that one from my office: p. 4 比恩年輕時... to the end of p. 45, p. 58 一九九〇年春訓... to the end of p. 68, p. 75 他並非這個理想的原創者... to p. 78 ... 恐怕要精準許多, p. 81 詹姆斯是位唯美主義者... to p. 84 ... 更積極地提出解決之道, p. 88 與詹姆斯來回通信並信服他理念的群眾不斷增加... to p. 91 ... 築起一座高牆 將一切擋在外面, p. 96 直到一九九〇年初期... to the end of p. 103
Homework/Preparation Questions:
Important note... you are only required to prepare an answer for class if your name is next to the question below. However, it will help your preparation to consider all the questions.
1. (Jenny) What is an academic writing "move"? In other words, give your own definition or example of the term "move(s)" on 頁1 of They Say / I Say.
2. (Jenny) Does the social and argumentative style of writing that Graff and Birkenstein explain on 頁3 of They Say / I Say agree with your previous writing instruction (in high school and college)? Or does it disagree? Explain.
3. (Aaron... the other one, ha ha) On 頁8, G&B say that "making statements that nobody can possibly disagree with... is actually a recipe for flat, lifeless writing." They also say that good writing must answer the question "so what?" or "who cares?" Do this philosophy agree with your previous writing instruction (in high school and college)? Or does it disagree? Explain.
4. (Kim) Why did Michael Lewis decide to study baseball? (See especially 頁xiv.)
5. What is "financial determinism" in baseball (頁xii)? Phrase Lewis' disagreement with financial determinism (on 頁xiii and throughout the book) into a "They Say / He Says" template. For example, Many baseball fans think that _________. But Michael Lewis argues in his book Moneyball that _________.
6. (Ting-Ju) What gives traditional baseball scouts and managers their intellectual authority? In other words, how did they get (and keep) their jobs? Why does Billy Beane think this may lead to mistakes, and what source(s) of intellectual authority does he substitute?
7. (Esther) On 頁24, Lewis offers examples of how the traditional baseball scouts and managers speak "a language only faintly resembling English," one that relies on intuitive or non-scientific assumptions. He later explains, when he introduces Bill James, that baseball scouting and management has always been controlled by "insiders," who distrust the new scientific views developed by "outsiders." What we come to see is that the traditional language of baseball probably leads to these insiders making bad decisions, but that it also allows them to monopolize their own power. Can you think of another example in which an insider language is used to monopolize power? Explain.
-Buy Moneyball from NTHU bookstore (or elsewhere)
-Read They Say / I Say 頁1- bottom of 頁11 and the "Putting in Your Oar" section on 頁13-14.
-Read Moneyball 頁6-42, middle of 頁54- bottom of 頁63, bottom of 頁69 - bottom of 頁72, top of 頁76 to bottom of 頁78, top of頁82 - middle of 頁85, bottom of 頁89 - bottom of 頁96. (The parts I removed just tell you more about how Billy Beane never lived up to his promise as a baseball player, and more about how Bill James developed an important theory of baseball statistics that was largely unknown until the 1990s.)
Pages for 中文 edition if you borrow that one from my office: p. 4 比恩年輕時... to the end of p. 45, p. 58 一九九〇年春訓... to the end of p. 68, p. 75 他並非這個理想的原創者... to p. 78 ... 恐怕要精準許多, p. 81 詹姆斯是位唯美主義者... to p. 84 ... 更積極地提出解決之道, p. 88 與詹姆斯來回通信並信服他理念的群眾不斷增加... to p. 91 ... 築起一座高牆 將一切擋在外面, p. 96 直到一九九〇年初期... to the end of p. 103
Homework/Preparation Questions:
Important note... you are only required to prepare an answer for class if your name is next to the question below. However, it will help your preparation to consider all the questions.
1. (Jenny) What is an academic writing "move"? In other words, give your own definition or example of the term "move(s)" on 頁1 of They Say / I Say.
2. (Jenny) Does the social and argumentative style of writing that Graff and Birkenstein explain on 頁3 of They Say / I Say agree with your previous writing instruction (in high school and college)? Or does it disagree? Explain.
3. (Aaron... the other one, ha ha) On 頁8, G&B say that "making statements that nobody can possibly disagree with... is actually a recipe for flat, lifeless writing." They also say that good writing must answer the question "so what?" or "who cares?" Do this philosophy agree with your previous writing instruction (in high school and college)? Or does it disagree? Explain.
4. (Kim) Why did Michael Lewis decide to study baseball? (See especially 頁xiv.)
5. What is "financial determinism" in baseball (頁xii)? Phrase Lewis' disagreement with financial determinism (on 頁xiii and throughout the book) into a "They Say / He Says" template. For example, Many baseball fans think that _________. But Michael Lewis argues in his book Moneyball that _________.
6. (Ting-Ju) What gives traditional baseball scouts and managers their intellectual authority? In other words, how did they get (and keep) their jobs? Why does Billy Beane think this may lead to mistakes, and what source(s) of intellectual authority does he substitute?
7. (Esther) On 頁24, Lewis offers examples of how the traditional baseball scouts and managers speak "a language only faintly resembling English," one that relies on intuitive or non-scientific assumptions. He later explains, when he introduces Bill James, that baseball scouting and management has always been controlled by "insiders," who distrust the new scientific views developed by "outsiders." What we come to see is that the traditional language of baseball probably leads to these insiders making bad decisions, but that it also allows them to monopolize their own power. Can you think of another example in which an insider language is used to monopolize power? Explain.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Textbooks
A student writes: "I went down to the bookstore today, and I was completely dumbfounded by the price of the books."
My response: Yes, I realize that the price of the books is high... I think this is because the book dealer adds a premium for air shipping. I really do apologize for this, and I wish it was not the case.
So, what to do? I will purchase an additional copy of each and make them available for students to borrow. Also it is OK with me if you purchase a copy with one other student and share together.
My response: Yes, I realize that the price of the books is high... I think this is because the book dealer adds a premium for air shipping. I really do apologize for this, and I wish it was not the case.
So, what to do? I will purchase an additional copy of each and make them available for students to borrow. Also it is OK with me if you purchase a copy with one other student and share together.
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