Thanks for the link! I just read the introduction to blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and the experience vs. science theme comes up in that as well.

I don't think there really needs to be much of an exchange. I don't think that there's anything that the scouts know that the sabermetricians won't learn by watching a lot of baseball themselves. And they still have to watch a lot of baseball because there's a shortage of reliable stats on defense. All of the ones I've seen (Zone Rating, UZR, and what have you) woefully miscategorize some players.

Maybe it's because I'm a UofC grad myself, and/or because I study decision science and Moneyball is one of our favorite texts these days, but I think the connection you make is terrific. It also helps that I polished off my new copy of Blink the other day, which, as the previous poster notes, plays around with some of the same issues (you beat me to the point David!). As much as I love Gladwell's work though, I felt that he doesn't cleanly resolve the fight between a thoughtful scientific approach and a purely experience driven/intuitive one... he seems to suggest that the intuitive decisions should be formally trained through science, and then left to operate unimpeded. But the prescriptive advice for doing that isn't as clear as I would have liked it to be. (Nevertheless, I highly recommend Blink).

Hey Dan, completely off topic but: are you going to critique or mention the David Malpass article in today's Journal on Social Security reform and tax reform? It seems to me the most authoritative defense yet of Bush's SS reform plans (that is, if he's accurately guessed what they are).

Is George Will guest blogging?

Street smarts v. book smarts. Isn't that Trump's schtick this third season of The Apprentice? It's a phony construct, one meant to divide rather than explain. We all learn by experience. But thinking like a scientist comes to us the application of reason, a skilled finely honed in higher education.

But always the danger, with the undeniably helpful advances of science of losing touch with our animal nature. The failure of folks who responded to the pre-tsunami retreat of the ocean by advancing towards the sea comes to mind. As you probably read, both wild animals and primitive tribal types believed their eyes/sixth sense rather than some savant's mathematical formulas.

Sissy, I'm not sure if that's a parody or you're serious, but just in case you're serious --- CNN reported on a story where a little girl saved her family and ~ 100 other people, because she remeber ed from science class that the water pulling in was a sign of a tsunami.

Dan are you going to review Blink for us?

Yeah, but the real question is whether you can connect any given argument to Thucydides, Durkheim, Wittgenstein, and the menu at the Medici. Bonus points for doing so simultaneously.

Sissy, I didn't know animals and primitive tribes had advanced math skills. Can you elaborate?

It seems to me one way to make the link between statistical analysis and experience is to think in terms of correlation/causation.

Make the statisticians clearly explain the causal links in the correlations they make. Make the scouts clearly explain why a statistical correlation is not useful in any particular case.

Is the blogosphere an example of collective Durkheimian effervescence? Is going to the College of the University of Chicago such a fundamentally different experience than any other school? Are we truly warped for the rest of our lives?