Rejecting the null hypothesis

In my statistics classes right now, I'm teaching hypothesis testing. The null hypothesis can always be translated into the sentence "nothing special is happening", which usually means we assume two things we are measuring are equal until we get strong evidence they are not.

The null hypothesis would be that the Raiders suck. They sucked last year, and the year before that, and for several years before that. The worst they got was 2-14, really truly awful. The best they got was 5-11, not good enough to be mediocre, just consistently not very good.

As of yesterday afternoon, the Raiders are 5-4, over .500 after more than half the season. More than that, they are the second highest scoring team in the league. Even better, the rest of their division has no team that is a world beater, so they are only one half game out of the division lead after beating the division leading Chiefs yesterday in overtime in Oakland. So far, the Raiders are 3-0 in the division, which could be an important tiebreaker.

With a record of 5-4, it's not fair to say they are awesome. One of their losses was against the struggling 49ers, and they also lost to the Cardinals, another team under .500. Still, the evidence is strong enough to reject the null hypothesis. As of November 8 2010, we reject the notion the Raiders suck, and not sucking is a very important step forward.

A disturbing realization.

My mom was very pretty. She modeled before she got married. I wish I could find one of the more glamorous pictures of her, but I'm not sure who has one. This picture will do the trick. If you can take your eyes off her very fine stems for a moment, you'll see she had a long elegant nose and high cheekbones. When she was young, people often compared her to Joanne Woodward. Other actresses who look like her include Cloris Leachman, and if we go a generation younger, Meryl Streep.

Mom was pretty. So far, so good.

Consider the women whose pictures I put up when lazy blogging. First among equals is Indira Varma and her nigh perfect collarbone. If our eyes stray upward, we might notice she has a long elegant nose and high cheekbones.

Of course, my mom had a light complexion and blond hair, while Ms. Varma is much darker.

Still. Hmm.

Then we have Julie Newmar. If I put up a picture featuring her spectacular gams, many people might never get around to looking at her face.

Long elegant nose.

High cheekbones.

Pattern emerging.

Melissa Theuriau. There's nobody like Melissa Theuriau. Her eyes are actually gold not brown. I don't think I've ever seen eyes her color anywhere else except on some felines. She is impossibly angelic.

Okay, okay, she has a long elegant nose and high cheekbones.

Hey, Matty Boy? Wasn't The Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman the first time you felt those funny feelings? Allison Hayes was quite the looker, wasn't she? If you can take your eyes off her obvious charms, doesn't she have kind of a long elegant nose and high cheekbones?

Those are many good questions, hypothetical question asker. Let me give them all one well-considered answer.

Shut up.

Ranked Choice Voting does its job.

For several election cycles, the mayor of Oakland has become the Senior Tour of California politics. Instead of giving the job to somebody from the city council, we have had retreads from Washington or Sacramento winning the very tough job by name recognition alone. First it was Jerry Brown, who did kind of okay, then Ron Dellums, who is viewed as a disaster. This year, Don Perata, formerly a President pro tempore of the State Senate and currently a lobbyist for the Prison Guards Union, easily the most corrupt union of state employees, was trying to get the gig. He spent the most money and was always the leader in the polls, but like a lot of politicians with name recognition, he had both high positives and high negatives. More than that, his name was linked with the return of the Raiders to Oakland, a move that stinks to this day of back room politics.

The ballot had ten names and a place for write-in votes, but the system now in place is Ranked Choice Voting, which I have written about before here.

Perata's money and clout gave him the first place position after the first round of voting, but those negatives were still a worry for his campaign. The completely corrupt San Francisco Chronicle supported his run, but the East Bay papers threw their support behind three candidates, a number chosen cleverly since Ranked Choice Voting lets you choose three candidates. That lucky triumvirate was made up of councilpeople Jean Quan and Rebecca Kaplan and political science professor Joe Tuman. Both the Oakland Tribune and the East Bay Express gave their endorsement to all three.

On the first ballot, Perata had a commanding lead.

Perata 34.0%
Quan 24.6%
Kaplan 21.5%
Tuman 12.4%
Others 7.6%

Because Tuman was so far behind, he had no chance to catch Kaplan, and by the time the small fry were re-distributed, Tuman trailed the Top Three by a little more.

Perata 36.1%
Quan 27.1%
Kaplan 23.3%
Tuman 13.6%

Perata still looked to have a commanding lead, but the voters for the other three understood the system remarkably well. As Tuman's votes were redistributed, the big boost went to Kaplan, but it wasn't enough to catch Quan.

Perata 40.2% (up 4.1%)
Quan 31.0% (up 3.9%)
Kaplan 28.8% (up 5.3%)

Going into the last round, Perata was still on Easy Street. If even one in three of Kaplan's supporters switched to Perata, he would be the next mayor. Instead, Quan got 75% of Kaplan's votes that weren't exhausted and ended up with 51.1% of the remaining vote. The word had been spread. If you vote for one of the other three, don't vote for Perata. He spent a boatload of dirty money and he ended up in second place.

I don't think Quan will be a miracle worker. She was in fact my second choice, but I am every bit as happy that Don Perata will not be my mayor as I am that Meg Whitman will not be my governor and Carly Fiorina will not be my senator.

Plagues on all their houses and ashes in all their mouths would be just dandy with me.

Dig up all their fields and salt the earth.

Other Biblical and Shakespearean invectives are implied.

Best of luck to Her Honor Jean Quan.

Random 10, 11/5/10

Cemetery Polka Tom Waits
Red Rain Peter Gabriel
Sunday Kind of Love Etta James
Children Will Listen Bernadette Peters
My Evil Twin They Might Be Giants
It's Over Roy Orbison
Reet Petite (The Finest Girl You Ever Want To Meet) Jackie Wilson
Pressure Drop Toots & the Maytals
In Germany Before The War Randy Newman
The Imposter Elvis Costello & the Attractions
Bonus non-random 1:
Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When you Smile) Van Morrison

This was very close to a one and out. I love Cemetery Polka. But there's a heck of a lot of songs on this list I love. Etta sings one of my favorites, and so does Bernadette. They Might Be Giants and Toots & the Maytals put forward a couple of their strongest tracks. Then we have the Royal Orb followed by Mr. Excitement! himself, two of the greatest voices in pop music in the last 50 years. Reet Petite is such a great tune about being in love, Van Morrison decided he had to write a song about a song.

"Jackie Wilson said she was Reet Petite
The kinda love knocks me off my feet..."

Have a great day and listen to a couple tracks.

I'm in heaven when you smile.

These aren't the results you are looking for.

Thought I might try a little Jedi mind trick to see if we could get a do over, but obviously the Force is not so strong in this one.

I sent $50 each to four campaigns and only one of those campaigns won. Prop. 25 passed, so now it's a majority vote to pass the budget, though it's still a two-thirds majority to raise a tax. At least it's a step in the right direction.

Prop. 19 failed, Jerry Ellis Powell did not get on the AC Transit board and in the closest run of all the losing causes I donated to, Michael Nava will not be on the Superior Court.

There is some good news. In the statewide races, the Republicans got poll-axed, with the exception of Kamala Harris whose race is still undecided. The money spent by the two Texas oil companies to thwart air pollution standards also failed, so it has not been a good year for obvious moneybag jackasses to buy an election in California.


And then there's the matter of the less obvious moneybag jackasses, which brings us to the Oakland mayoral race. Ten people ran and the top four candidates are as follows.

Don Perata 35.2%
Jean Quan 24.2%
Rebecca Kaplan 20.9%
Joe Tuman 11.9%
six others less than 8%

This one goes to Ranked Choice Voting and the computer program will be run on Friday. It's a lock that Tuman won't be mayor, since even if he's the second choice on every ballot of the six people who did worse than he did, he won't catch up to Rebecca Kaplan. This means it's clearly going to be at least six instant runoffs and it might go to the maximum of eight. If it's decided before the eighth ballot, Perata wins. Quan, Kaplan and Tuman were all seen as the anti-Perata candidates, and several newspapers endorsed all three. There is a chance Kaplan or Quan will become mayor. I would be very disappointed if Perata is our next mayor, but given what I've already seen on Wednesday morning, I'm used to disappointment.

On the bright side, did I mention the Giants won the World Series? Yes, I believe I did.

We love all you Giants

A lot of the stories being published right now would have you believe the last fifty years of fandom for supporters of the San Francisco Giants have been like a prison sentence. Don't get me wrong. It feels great to say "World Champion San Francisco Giants". It will certainly shut up some of the A's fans who actually put more effort into being Giant haters. But my memories of the Giants aren't about pain and misery. We got to root for some great teams and some astounding players over the last half century.

Of course we love Mays and McCovey and Marichal, but we also love Gaylord Perry, the forgotten man of the retired SF uniforms. He was like a precursor to Barry Bonds. Yes, he was cheating, but he was cheating for us, and that made a difference.

We also love the guys we got late in their careers who still produced for us. We love Harvey Kuenn and Joe Morgan and Rick Reuschel. We love the kids we traded away too early. We love Gary Mathews and Gary Maddox and George Foster and especially Orlando Cepeda.

We love Jose Pagan and Jose Uribe, Manny Trillo and Tito Fuentes.

We love all three Alou brothers.

We love the great nicknames. Ollie "Downtown" Brown. "Fireball" Frank Linzy. John the Count, Will the Thrill, Sudden Sam.

We love Jeff "Old Penitentiary Face" Leonard.

We love the guys we had at third. Jimmy Davenport and Jim Ray Hart. Matt Williams.

We love our second basemen. Hal Lanier, Tito Fuentes, Joe Morgan, Robby Thompson, Jeff Kent.

We even love the guys we hated. Poor Ray Sadecki, whose tombstone should read "The Bum We Got When We Gave Away Orlando Cepeda". Johnnie LeMaster, the shortstop who had the misfortune of taking the job after local boy and All-Star Chris Speier was traded away. LeMaster, who had the word "BOO" on his back for one home game back in the 1970s. We love Candy Maldanado, whose bad play in right cost us the NLCS so many years ago.

We even love Barry Bonds, a very unlovable guy. While it feels like a bad marriage now, I have to admit a screamed like a banshee at several home runs that found their way into McCovey Cove.

Thanks to all the guys who wore the uniform, who had on the cap the the big orange "SF" on it these past fifty years. It feels great now that this new team of kids and castoffs have brought home the big trophy, but we won't forget all the great guys and great memories that came before.

Please vote today, if you have not done so already.

I already voted, and for the first time I'm a poll worker this election. This could be interesting.

If you have not already exercised the franchise, please do so today.