Why football coaches should be more aggressive on 4th down

According to Brian Burke, an NFL statistical analyst who runs Advanced NFL Stats,

Every single serious study of 4th-down decisions has found that, in most situations, teams would be better off by going for the conversion attempt rather than kicking. I’ve recently completed a study of 4th-down decisions that confirms what some fans already know, that it pays to be more aggressive. Those short on time might want to skip ahead to the bottom line.

In normal football situations, when neither team is ahead by much, and when the clock is not yet a factor, we can weigh the costs and benefits of each possible decision. Field-goal attempts, punts and conversion attempts can be valued by using a concept called Expected Points. A 1st down at any given yard line has an equivalent point value based on the average of the next score in the game. For example, a 1st down at midfield is worth 1.9 expected points.

Since we know the average punt distances and field-goal percentages from various field positions, we can accurately estimate the expected point values of kicks. And since we know the conversion percentages on 4th-down attempts, we can value those, too. When the values are compared, it becomes clear that going for the first down is the better decision far more often than most people, and most coaches, think.

The graph below charts the “recommended option for each field position and distance to go combination. On the line or below it, a coach should go for the 1st down:”

The bottom line, Burke says, is that coaches should “normally be far more aggressive on 4th down.” But what prevents them from doing so?

You might ask: If it’s so obvious, then why don’t coaches go for it more often? There are a number of good explanations. The authors of the football research classic “The Hidden Game of Football” note that in the early days of the sport, it was rare for a team to score more than once all game. A punt basically guaranteed the opponent wouldn’t score on the next drive. Professor David Romer, author of one of the definitive papers on the subject, theorized that coaches are worried more about job security than winning. If a coach goes for it and fails, it’s his fault. But if he punts and loses, well, that’s just football, and his players take the blame.

I buy those explanations, but I also think it has something to do with what economists call Prospect Theory. In short, almost all people tend to fear losses far more than they value equivalent gains. In this perspective, a punt is considered the “break-even” decision. A failed conversion attempt is seen as a loss, and a successful attempt is seen as a gain. But the loss is feared disproportionately, and the result is clouded decision-making.

Above, I wrote “in normal football situations.” When time becomes a factor, or when a team falls far behind, we need a different way to analyze decisions. For these situations we need to rely on a Win Probability model, an index of how likely a team is to win based on all relevant game variables.

What this does suggest, however, is that an arbitrage opportunity has arisen in the NFL. The first coach who “takes advantage of a more aggressive 4th-down doctrine” could bring in far more victories. But if probably doesn’t go his way, he will be out of a job.

In Lebanon, Easy Choice Between Public and Private School

From The Daily Star:

Reina Wardini, a mother of two, laughs out loud at the thought of sending her boys to a public school. “There was no decision to make. The schooling my children receive in a private school is of a higher level,” she says. Yet like many Lebanese families, it is a choice she pays dearly for. The Wardini family pays 5 million Lebanese pounds a year for Paul, 15 and again for Jean, 17 to attend the Sagess-Brasilia Catholic School in the Beirut district of Achrafieh.

“It gets more expensive all the time because of the rising cost of living,” says Wardini. “But I would never consider sending my boys to public schools. That is not an option for us” – she laughs again – “except maybe in case of an emergency.”

Many Lebanese families, like the Wardinis, are critical of Lebanon’s public-school system, and stretch budgets thin in order to keep their children in private schools. This attitude is somewhat puzzling given the government’s generous spending on public education – the sector re­ceives around $600 million a year, and is ranked as the state’s third-largest expense. Yet at present, only two thirds of students are enrolled in the private sector.

Click here to read the full article.

The Top 10 Craziest Things Ever Said During a U.N. Speech

Joshua Keating of Foreign Policy writes:

History is rich with memorable orations delivered by the world’s leaders as nations convene to discuss the critical issues of the day. From the impassioned to the provocative to the truly bizarre, here are the 10 most unforgettable remarks to come out of the United Nations general assembly speeches in the last sixty years.

Below as an excerpt:

Fidel Castro: ”Were Kennedy not a millionaire, illiterate, and ignorant, then he would obviously understand that you cannot revolt against the peasants.”

Yasser Arafat: “An old world order is crumbling before our eyes, as imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and racism, whose chief form is Zionism, ineluctably perish.”

Daniel Ortega: “Before consulting the hotheads who present various military options such as a military invasion: remember, President Reagan, Rambo only exists in the movies.”

Muammar al-Qaddafi: “It should not be called a security council, it should be called a terror council.”

Quote of the Day

“Reparations advocates make the foolish unchallenged pronouncement that the United States became rich on the backs of free black labor. That’s utter nonsense. Slavery has never had a very good record of producing wealth. Think about it. Slavery was all over the South. Buying into the reparations nonsense, you’d have to conclude that the antebellum South was rich and the slave-starved North was poor.

The truth of the matter is just the opposite. In fact, the poorest states and regions of our country were places where slavery flourished: Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia while the richest states and regions were those where slavery was absent: Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.”

~ Walter Williams

South Africa’s Illegal Saliva Trade

From the Guardian:

South Africans in an impoverished township are profiting from an illegal trade in a precious new currency ‑ saliva.

Tuberculosis sufferers in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, were found to be selling samples of their sputum to healthy people to pass off as their own in a scam to gain medical grants.

An investigation by the West Cape News identified people with TB charging R50-100 (£4.10-£8.20) for saliva samples contained in bottles stolen from health clinics.

The paper said that buyers of the samples were then able to get a card from a clinic indicating they have TB and use this to fraudulently obtain a temporary disability grant of R1,010 per month from the department of social development.

Waiting for Medical Treatment in Canada

Often, Canadians who seek medical treatment are forced to wait weeks for their surgery:

So rather than waiting, they chose to travel south to the U.S. for medical treatment. So what has been the consequence in Canada? The Los Angeles Times reports:

Hoping to capitalize on patients who might otherwise go to the U.S. for speedier care, a network of technically illegal private clinics and surgical centers has sprung up in British Columbia, echoing a trend in Quebec. In October, the courts will be asked to decide whether the budding system should be sanctioned.

More than 70 private health providers in British Columbia now schedule simple surgeries and tests such as MRIs with waits as short as a week or two, compared with the months it takes for a public surgical suite to become available for nonessential operations.

“What we have in Canada is access to a government, state-mandated wait list,” said Brian Day, a former Canadian Medical Assn. director who runs a private surgical center in Vancouver. “You cannot force a citizen in a free and democratic society to simply wait for healthcare, and outlaw their ability to extricate themselves from a wait list.”

Didn’t we try that in 1938?

From economist William Easterly’s paper “Can the West Save Africa?” that compares findings on Africa’s technological troubles from Lord Hailey in 1938 with a 2005 U.N. Millennium Project report:

Easterly writes:

All of the above seem to forget that technology does not implement itself. Technical knowledge needs people to implement it—people who have the right incentives to solve all of the glitches and unexpected problems that happen when you apply a new technology, people who make sure that all the right inputs get to the right places at the right time, and local people who are motivated to use the new technology. The field that addresses all these incentives is called economics.

HT: Hit & Run

Can Sanctions Work Against Iran?

The New York Time’s Room For Debate asks experts whether sanctions will work against Iran. Jim Walsh isn’t optimistic:

Research on the effect of sanctions is difficult to assess, but some scholars conclude that sanctions work about half the time. They are most effective when applied over a long period of time on small countries that are dependent on the outside world. Iran is a big country with oil, and it can build centrifuges faster than the international community can impose sanctions.

…The Islamic Republic is also a proud country, the kind for which sanctions are as likely to elicit defiance, as they are cooperation. Indeed, the Islamic Republic has been under one kind of sanction or another since its founding 30 years ago. Any objective assessment would have to conclude that sanctions have completely failed to alter Iran’s nuclear policy. This is not to suggest that they are without merit. They add cost and inconvenience, especially when the price of oil is low and the level of domestic economic mismanagement is high. But are they enough to induce Tehran to reverse its very public commitment to uranium enrichment? That seems highly unlikely, no matter what sanctions are imposed (and this assumes Russia and China sign up for unprecedentedly harsh sanctions).

HT: Andrew Sullivan

Quote of the Day

“I believe the State exists for the development of individual lives, not individuals for the development of the state.”

~ Julian Huxley

Why Doctors Are Giving Heroin to Heroin Addicts

Gaelle Faure from Time writes:

Treating heroin addicts by giving them heroin might seem counterintuitive. But for some of the most hardened addicts, administering heroin in supervised clinics may just do the trick where detox and methadone have failed.

Following the lead of Switzerland and a handful of other countries, Britain recently concluded a four-year trial in which longtime addicts were given daily heroin injections as part of a treatment program to eventually wean them off the drug. Now, with results showing the trial succeeded in reducing street-drug use and crime among participants, Britain could soon become only the second country in Europe to institutionalize the program. That would mean permanent, state-funded heroin clinics would be set up across the country to treat the most heavily addicted people.

Though the methods have been controversial, the resulsts have been encouraging: Street-drug use among participants fell 75% in six months.