Alex Bain's Blog

The Patriots get no respect

The best measure of whether or not a team is respected nationally is its record against the spread. According to this fantastic site that Bill Simmons suggested, the Pats were 40-13-1 against the spread in their 3 SuperBowl seasons. A team theoretically should have a .500 record against the spread, so if they consistently outperform, you have to assume they're being underrated.

When football fans from other cities would say that they were tired of hearing the Pats say "Nobody believed in us" after each title, I remember thinking that there was probably data to back up my team's argument. Now we have that data :-)

Health history

A mind blowing quote from my HBS case on diabetes:

"In 1940, 12 million people, or 10% of the U.S. population, had health insurance..."

Pythagorean Expectation in Baseball

Throughout most this baseball season, the Red sox have had a sizable lead in the A. L. East over the Yankees, but the wins and losses didn't tell the full story. When I checked the standings early on in the season, I noticed a curious column on ESPN's site called "ExWL". The footnote explained that this statistic is based on Bill James' Pythagorean Expectation. I read on, and discovered that you can very accurately predict a team's record if you know their cumulative runs scored and allowed to date. The site doesn't explicitly say this, but it stands to reason that, if there's a big disparity between the real record and the expected record, the two should eventually converge.

Well, according to the ExWL column, the Red Sox have never been ahead by more than a handful of games, even when they're real lead was ~15. This scared me, because I figured we were in for a dreadful month of August or September when the Yankees wins and losses began to better reflect the team's performance.

Sure enough, Boston's lead has dwindled, and we're in for a tight run down the stretch. The lesson to learn is: If you're a baseball fan watching an exciting pennant race, pay a lot of attention to what Bill James has to say.

Great quote on procrastination

"We procrastinate most doing that which most closely reflects our soul."
- The War of Art (as heard on the Mann/Allen productivity podcast)

This quote is certainly true for me, and explains why the emails that I most desperately want to write and write well, are often delivered tragically late.

I think that, if you believe this quote is true, it is empowering, because you can look at the activities you've been putting off as an opportunity to get to know yourself better.

That sounded a little too mushy; sorry.

In case the above is at all interesting to you, I also really liked this quote from the podcast:

"A good boss solves bigger problems than he creates."
[It came up in discussing how bosses tend to do the higher level thinking, and not the grunt work and the issues that arise from this arrangement.]

What HBS taught me about beer

We had a case on Coors for our first Strategy class yesterday. Here's a few little tidbits I picked up. The case was written in 1987, so some of these might not be true anymore:

• Because Coors doesn't pasteurize their beer, all Coors beer (even bottled or canned) is draft.
• Coors traditionally (until 1978) only had one brand of beer, Coors Banquet (still available in Denver). It was only distributed in 11 western states, and though priced below Bud, was considered a premium beer. Some people traveling to states where it was distributed would pack their suitcases to bring it home. Actors and politicians would have it shipped to them where they were working.
• Because the beer was not pasteurized, it didn't stay fresh very long. Worried about people drinking stale beer that had been brought back East, Coors took out an ad in the Washington Post that read: "Please do not buy our beer."
• Beers are typically produced in barrels of standard size. Each barrel holds enough beer to fill 331 12-ounce cans or bottles. A traditional keg is a half a barrel, or 165 beers, and "pony keg" is a quarter barrel, or 83 beers.
• Though they pride themselves on the quality of the ingredients they use, Bill Coors once admitted: "You could make Coors from swamp water and it would be exactly the same."

Thought you might find that interesting.

Why you should read 43 folders if you own a Mac

"All the reading in the world won’t teach you as much as your first french kiss."

I've recently started studying up on the topic of productivity, because I had huge problems in the area last semester. I simply had more things to do than what was possible, and found myself in need of a system to "priorganize" my activity.

Obviously, I'm a fan of the book Getting Things Done. I'm about 80% of the way through it, and very excited to start implementing it's advice this semester. What I've found though is that, while the book is thorough and complete, there are all sorts of little tid-bits being passed around online that make one's commitment to productivity even easier.

In the same way that there are many Mac rumor sites, but if I only have time to check one I check TUAW.com, there are many sites on productivity, but there is one that is more perfect for me than any other: 43Folders.com.

The site's name is a reference to part of the GTD system. It's written by a guy named Merlin Mann and he employs video, podcasting, and writing to help you become a more productive person. He's quite clever, and one of his recent posts contained the above quote which reminds me of Good Will Hunting and is certainly one I'll pull out in conversation in the future.

Great writing by Malcolm

From Malcolm Gladwell's semi-defense of Enron:

The national-security expert Gregory Treverton has famously made a distinction between puzzles and mysteries. Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts are a puzzle We can’t find him because we don’t have enough information. The key to the puzzle will probably come from someone close to bin Laden, and until we can fin that source bin Laden will remain at large.
The problem of what would happen in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein was, by contrast, a mystery. It wasn’t a question that had a simple, factual answer. Mysteries require judgments and the assessment of uncertainty, and the hard part is not that we have too little information but that we have too much. The C.I.A. had a position on what a post-invasion Iraq would look like, and so did the Pentagon and the State Department and Colin Powell and Dick Cheney and any number of political scientists and journalists and think-tank fellows. For that matter, so did every cabdriver in Baghdad.
The distinction is not trivial. If you consider the motivation and methods behind the attacks of September 11th to be mainly a puzzle, for instance, then the logical response is to increase the collection of intelligence, recruit more spies, add to the volume of information we have about Al Qaeda. If you consider September 11th a mystery, though, you’d have to wonder whether adding to the volume of information will only make things worse. You’d want to improve the analysis within the intelligence community; you’d want more thoughtful and skeptical people with the skills to look more closely at what we already know about Al Qaeda. You’d want to send the counter-terrorism team from the C.I.A. on a golfing trip twice a month with the counter-terrorism teams from the F.B.I. and the N.S.A. and the Defense Department, so they could get to know one another and compare notes.

This is a great article, which reminds me a lot of Michael Lewis' essay in Next: The Future Just Happened, where he describes a young (15 year-old) day-trader, Jonathan Lebed, who made $800K pumping stocks in chat rooms than ditching them. Lewis' argument was that the kid hadn't really done anything illegal, so he shouldn't have to forfeit any of his earnings.

Gladwell argues on his blog:

Can anyone explain—in plain language—what it is Jeff Skilling and Co. did wrong?

I’m not asking for an explanation for what they did wrong as businessmen. That’s plain. They did a mountain of stupid and arrogant things. Nor is this about what Skilling and company did that was unethical or in bad faith. There’s a mountain of evidence on that too. The question is strictly a legal one: according to the way the accounting rules were written at the time, what specific transgressions were Skilling guilty of that merited twenty-four years in prison? For the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that summaries must be three sentences or less.

I've been making a similar argument about Enron in conversations for a while, but I never wrote it down anywhere (and if I had, it wouldn't have approach the Gladwell's eloquence). The lesson is that I should post my controversial thoughts, so that if anyone else ever expands on them and makes them sound ingenious, I can say I was ahead of the curve :-)

Great quote found in "Getting Things Done"

"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."
- George Bernard Shaw

(I know this I is somewhat ironic after I spent the last few months whining about my crappy seat assignment @ HBS)

Stallone makes a comeback as "Rocky"

It's hard to make the argument that Sylvester Stallone is a genius, but we can certainly learn a lot from him. If you don't believe me, go back and watch the first Rocky movie, or even First Blood (the first Rambo movie). Many people don't know that he wrote both of those movies.

• Rocky - A put upon street thug is given a chance to fight the best boxer in the world, and he doesn't win, but he gos the distance and proves something to himself. One might say that the writing wasn't impressive, since most of the story actually happened in real life. I disagree. I think the script added nuance and depth to a simple idea. The Academy agreed, awarding it Best Picture in 1976.
• First Blood - My friend in high school wrote his term paper for US history about how this movie was the first, real Vietnam released in America. I know nothing about it's cultural significance, but he told me the movie made it ok for people to start talking about what had happened to the vets after they returned. Whether or not this is true, I'm impressed that the film took on such a lofty topic (possible consequences of our training a soldier too well), and handled it with respect, showing both sides of the issue.

I mention these movies and his writing talent because I thought of all that when I read a recent quote from him in a newspaper article (I hate linking to articles, b/c the links die so quickly):

"Every generation runs its course, and they are expected to step aside for the next generation," Stallone said. "My peers are going through it right now, and they feel they have much to contribute, but the opportunity is no longer there. They're considered obsolete, and it's just not true. This film is about how we still have something more to say."

I read this quote and loved it. It's especially interesting when you think about the parallels between Stallone and his character. Found the whole thing inspiring.

And then it came up again, last night, when I went to see "The Queen" with my better half (believe me that I was dragged kicking and screaming to this film). I was expecting a brutal (for me) period piece, with beautiful, effeminate, romantic men, and fancy costumes. I got all of those things (it wasn't a period piece, though), but I was surprised by what I took to be the film's ultimate message:

Most people thought she botched the death of Princess Di, but she was just doing what she was always taught to do, and what would have been expected of her before her generation became irrelevant.

I asked myself if I could sympathize with Stallone and the Queen. Have I been in this situation? I think I have, to a slight extent. I think most people have, if they've ever gone back for their high school or college's Homecoming game within a year or two of graduation. Is there a bigger letdown then these games? You walk around the campus that you used to rule, and you see so many faces that you don't recognize, and the ones you do recognize don't treat you with the same deference they once did, b/c they're in charge now. It's disorienting to realize how quickly one can lose what they've worked long and hard to build up.

I think the lesson is that obsolesce may be inevitable, but our recourse is to keep in touch with our old friends so that the memories don't just live in our heads, and to make as many of these memories as we can while we're young.

I hope that came off as more philosophic than cheesy, but I fear it didn't :-)

Where was the Internet invented?

Apparently, the 'net came into creation within walking distance of my current apartment, in Cambridge. As I prepare for HBS, and make my way through summer reading about the history of technology, I was surprised to come across this passage:

"ARPANET was designed and implemented by a small (then) Cambridge, MA-based firm called BBN (also known in those days as Bolt, Beranek & Newman)."

Of course the ARPANET was the precursor for the Internet, so it's fair to say that Cambridge was where all this fun got started.