Paul DePodesta Quotes
The nice thing about baseball is that all of the possible outcomes are known - it's not quite as messy as the real world. That makes the game an excellent playground for probability.
Lewis, Michael. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. W. W. Norton & Company, 2003, p. 120.
Politicians, like many other people, often confuse correlation with causality as few have studied or understand the mathematics of probability.
He is absolutely right, but unfortunately made this statement several years after he served as the Fed Chairman. He never made a statement like this when he and his colleagues made their policies based on their economic forecasting. Central bankers have generally felt that one of their jobs was to give the people confidence in the nation’s banking system and economy and the admission that much policy making was based on “coin toss” forecasting.
Paul DePodesta is an American football executive and former baseball executive who is the chief strategy officer and de facto president of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL). He previously served as a front-office assistant for the Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics, and New York Mets. DePodesta was also general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The year after leading the Dodgers to their first playoff win in 16 years, he was fired after the 2005 club finished with its worst record in 11 years. He was the ninth general manager in the club's history since its move to Los Angeles. He is also known for his appearance in the book and movie Moneyball about his time with the Athletics.
