Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Campaign Finance. Triangulation.

The website HoopHype released a list of NBA players, owners, and executives and the amounts they've donated to candidates in the 2012 presidential campaign. DBSF wanted to get a better picture of what type of NBA employee was giving to which candidate. So, he exported the data into statistical software and conducted something called logistic regression, which is often used to analyze binary outcomes, like yes/ no questions, or candidate A vs candidate B. In conducting the quantitative analysis DBSF went through a range of rigorous exercises and nuanced statistical modifications to make sure his findings were accurate. The results are as follows: The young black guys that play basketball gave $ to Obama. The old white guys that own the stadiums & local energy/ utility companies gave $ to Romney. DBSF has pitched the research to top economics and political science journals. Fingers crossed.

Triangulation is a way of using angles to measure location. In the social sciences it is a way of using multiple sources to confirm something (i.e., double/ triple checking). So like if you want to know if there was a sequel to Double Team you could check on Wikipedia and IMDB and maybe just a few random Google searches to learn that like every other movie Jean-Claude Van Damme (and Dennis Rodman for that matter) starred in there was never a sequel. Melky Cabrera doesn't get this concept of triangulation. After finding out that he had failed a drug test that would incur a 50 game suspension, Cabrera allegedly paid a colleague $10K to create a fake website that claimed that a legal supplement could cause the failed test. It is important to note that as of 2010 there were 1.2 zettabytes (aka 1.3 trillion gigabytes) of information on the internet. Ergo, there isn't much that the average MLB investigator or, 4 year old, would have to do to verify if one--yes one--questionable website presented accurate information. And this says nothing of other alternative, such as information in print form, or simply calling medical professionals. That being said, the effort and ingenuity is worthy of praise.

No comments:

Post a Comment