Comments on: Wisdom Of The Crowd

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:00:28 +0000

This looks like such fun. I hardly feel qualified to have an opinion on such matters… But it looks like a lot of fun is to be had with this.

By: walkoffblast

walkoffblast — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:25:29 +0000

Yeah, those crazy fans are sure to wildly inflate the Wieters projection. No projection system would ever do such a thing …

By: philosofool

philosofool — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:23:41 +0000

The thing I’m finding awesome is the obviously large number of M’s fans that read this site. Jack Wilson was the second SS to receive a projection, after Derek Jeter.

By: Rudy Gamble

Rudy Gamble — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:27:27 +0000

Awesome stuff. Will look forward to the inevitable comparisons by Tango of these results vs. the other projected estimates.

By: Shizane

Shizane — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:19:11 +0000

This is awesome…very user-friendly. One suggestion: can the actual value of the projection show up right under the actual stats (perhaps in a different color) so I don’t have to go to the “view my projections” screen to see the nominal output of my choices?

By: philosofool

philosofool — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:18:56 +0000

When it comes to jerks, the best you can hope for is that jerks washout by contradicting one another or simply get swamped by the vast majority of people that are just giving their best opinion.

By: Joser

Joser — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:06:09 +0000

Yeah, the projections for guys like Matt Weiters and David Ortiz should be, uh, entertaining.

By: JoeR43

JoeR43 — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:39:30 +0000

And so far, even home team doesn’t look all that relevant.
Examples:
Pujols, Cards fan vote: .331/.440/.633, 42 HR
Pujols, other fan vote: .330/.441/.630, 41 HR

Pedroia, Sox fan vote: .311/.383/.467, 15 HR
Pedroia, other fan vote: .310/.379/.463, 15 HR

Ichiro, Mariners vote: .336/.382/.434, 116 R
Ichiro, other fan vote: .332/.377/.422, 110 R

I’m sure some guys (most noteably young players and guys in decline) will get some home crowd bias, but so far so good.

By: Toffer Peak

Toffer Peak — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:25:17 +0000

The Wikipedia Article has a surprisingly good break down of the phenomenon and the criteria necessary for it to be successful. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

My biggest concern would be bias (Independence). Since this site already lists Bill James’ projections, the fan’s and in the following weeks, CHONE, ZiPS, etc. a lot of fans will probably be biased by those numbers. To be most effective WOTC predictions need to be “blind”. Unfortunately I don’t think there is any way to realistically fix this. Fortunately those projection systems are pretty good so this variable shouldn’t too negatively affect the results.

The other concern I have that has been mentioned is ensuring that everyone has good intentions. On the Internet their are always jerks who are willing to ruin a great thing. An “easy” way to correct this would be to put your money where your mouth is. Submissions could cost say $.25-$1 with the person whose projection was closest at the end of the year getting all of the winnings. This would incentivize people to only submit their true beliefs. Of course this would severely reduce the number of submissions as well as be a huge burden on Fangraphs to create such a system.

Overall I think this is an awesome idea (something that I unfortunately had been hoping to implement myself in the future) and as long as they can control for crazy submissions I think the final results should be quite accurate.

By: walkoffblast

walkoffblast — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:11:05 +0000

It was interesting to watch what you are talking about in the last paragraph play out favorably with Predictatron. It will likely be even more interesting to see how this experiment plays out.