bordering on too much analysis
I was messing around, making some graphs with advanced stats from Basketball Reference's Advanced stats, when I noticed something interesting. Something remarkable. There are two ways you can give your team an advantage in possessions: you can force turnovers from the other team, or you can grab offensive rebounds. Players can excel at one or… Continue reading Tari Eason is an extra possessions savant
Game theory offers an excellent tool for thinking about game balance: the Nash Equilibrium. Nash Equilibria tell us how often players should pick each possible strategy in a competitive game if they are playing optimally. But there's a problem -- describing how different options (characters, civilizations, etc.) in a game perform against each other in… Continue reading A better way to measure game balance using game theory
Approval voting offers a simple solution to one of the most annoying problems in the Pick one #link voting system we use in most US elections: If you're ever stuck deciding whether to vote for one candidate or another, you can just vote for both. Do you like Al Gore and Ralph Nader? Vote for… Continue reading How to be a Smart Approval Voting Voter: An Approver’s Guide
NBA teams have gotten worse at drafting. I look into why and what this could mean for future NBA drafts.
Approval Voting offers a simple voting reform: instead of voting for just one candidate in an election, voters can vote for however many they like. This is a pretty obvious fix to a fairly common voting problem; you don't have to choose between voting for the candidate you really love who has little chance of… Continue reading How many candidates should you vote for in an Approval voting election?
Age of Empires 2 has proven to be an extremely resilient game; despite being originally released before the current millennium (in late 1999) and having been essentially abandoned by Microsoft for nearly a decade, it remained popular, and, after two remakes (in 2013 and 2020), it is perhaps more popular than it has ever been.… Continue reading Age of Empires 2 is the weirdest game of rock, paper, scissors you’ll ever play
Ranked Choice and Approval Voting have emerged as the two leading alternative voting systems being advocated in the U.S. I've looked a bit at how Ranked Choice might perform, particularly in a polarized political climate, and found that, though it usually is better at picking broadly agreeable candidates than the Plurality system used in most… Continue reading How Approving should Approval Voting Voters Be?
image from soaringdownsouth.com Just as in our heliocentric solar system many small planets orbit a much larger sun, heliocentric NBA offenses feature several role players orbiting around one (or two) stars. Think four shooters zipping around the court while Luka Doncic isolates or Trae Young determining the fate of almost every Hawks' possession. A lot… Continue reading The Most Heliocentric Teams in the NBA
Despite more than half of NBA teams making the playoffs each year, the Sacramento Kings have not made the playoffs since 2006, tying the LA Clippers' Extremely Racist Owner Era for the longest playoff drought in league history. As of early March, the Kings look likely to take sole ownership of the NBA's playoff drought… Continue reading Making the playoffs is easier in the East. Would that have helped the Kings avoid a record playoff drought?
As of December 9, the Warriors lead the NBA in assists with 28.7 per game, a mere .8 ahead of the second place Spurs. But the raw assists per game numbers do not come close to conveying how much the Warriors are lapping the rest of the NBA at scoring off of passes. The Warriors'… Continue reading The Warriors are in Their Own Universe at Scoring Off of Assists