A surge in the East... Part 2 of Buyer's Remorse

II. Tempting the Town Crier

This time around, the town crier beat the gong as he prepared to deliver the bad news
Quite simply the folks in Chwedru had reached the limits of zero tolerance
True, they had faithfully paid all premiums due for their soul insurance
But after two years of skimping on preparation, there was no valid excuse

The scribes were no fools, they realized they had to change course
For it would be no use at this stage to invoke the force majeure clause
It really didn't auger well that the gong was being beaten
That was surely an impending sign of a sticky situation

The common folk of the Wan tribe had long accepted the elders' authority
The unwritten contract was that human life, hard as it was, had sanctity
Most importantly, the hunger seasons of yore would never again be observed
If avoiding such troubles was no longer guaranteed, their power could not be preserved

Supply chains be damned, it wasn't even close to a dilemma
Their response was clear and swiftly conveyed to the town crier
They would immediately double down on the restrictions
And strongly recommend to all emotional vaccinations

Word was sent to the herbalists to produce new concoctions
All able bodied Wan should heed the call for battle stations
The standing army, long inactive, would be readied straightaway
And on the farms, reserve crops would be harvested without delay

The town crier, at length, conferred with the chief scribe and the linguists
These last had a weary air to them, you might call them pessimists
They had seen the rest of the world in upheaval, as if in a daze
And were proud they had so far managed to avoid even a second wave

Under the palaver tree, they debated the situation
Needless to say they had to take tough decisions
They tallied the upcoming festivals that would need to be postponed
Lest the entire tribe end up like those in the torrid zone

Once the course of action was decided there could be no second guessing
Their strategic resolve was unshakeable, there was no window dressing
The division of labor would fall into place, the rest was organization
Collective responsibility was the policy, they would brook no deviation

...

It was as he left the Wan settlements that the town crier was accosted
Ananse the Spider had decided that a direct approach was warranted
Without any preliminaries, he simply handed over a large monetary package
And asked straight up if that was sufficient compensation for the proposed damage

The town crier was rather impressed
   by the full frontal assault on his probity
He was sufficiently malleable by temperament
   (having what you might call moral flexibility)
He calmly assessed the assumed wages
   of this proposed integrity abasement

"Throw in a bottle of Schnapps and gourd of palm wine,
   that should be sufficient"

Good help came cheap these days, Ananse had to admit
There was almost no need to negotiate the misdeed
Just a few choice words as he explained the outline of his plan
And before long, he heard those three words: "I'm your man"

A goat doesn't pass a leopard's door, it wasn't mere survival bias
Such unerring instincts had long guided Ananse in his dealings
Limiting one's exposure, what some would term common sense
Surprisingly enough turned out to be uncommon in those lands

It's not so much that he was the greatest of grifters
The truth was that there would always be takers
Humanity was easily dazzled by rhetoric that sparkled
Hastening, as ever, to prove that gullibility was immortal

Temptation, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. It's hard to resist the musical commentary. (spotify version)

• Man's Temptation by The Impressions
• Tempted to Touch by Beres Hammond
• Temptation by Yemi Alade
• Temptation by Prince
• Man's Temptation by Gene Chandler
• Temptation by Charlie Parker

Buyer's Remorse (Series Index)

A covidious folktale

1. Buying Opportunity
2. Tempting the Town Crier
3. The Situation Thereof

This folktale is part of a series: In a covidious time.

Next in Part 3: The Situation Thereof

File under: humour, satire, culture, observation, folktale, Ananse, storytelling, whimsy, myth, coronavirus, pandemic, Social Living, Things Fall Apart, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, hatchet job, covidious, poetry, toli

Writing log. May 3, 2022

You probably have to be Jewish to appreciate the full and bitter irony of this sentence:

Nearly 11 months into a devastating war, a serious new challenge has emerged in Gaza: polio.

Growing up, there were two uncontested heroes in the Jewish-American pantheon: Sandy Koufax and Jonas Salk. If you were really in the know, you’d add a third: Albert Sabin.

Salk invented the polio vaccine, Sabin invented the oral polio vaccine.

Now Israel has contributed an entirely new entry to the history of polio.

It almost reads like a fable from Jewish literature. Except it’s not.

Apparently Nate Silver has a new book coming out, in which (if the reviews I’ve read are representative) he advances a theory of political philosophy based on his experiences in gambling.  It set me thinking, about the interesting negative template that’s always there when Data Guys get into gambling.  There’s always a lot of poker, maybe a little bit of backgammon – card counting at casinos maybe.  You have your Moneyball and its equivalents in sports betting.  But it surprises me that you very rarely see Data Science Skills applied to horse racing, even though that’s a very big and liquid gambling market where Big Data is quite easily available.

Subscribe now

Here's an exception that proves the rule – Bill Benter.  He used computer analysis to beat the bookies at the Hong Kong Jockey Club and took them for hundreds of millions of dollars (ie, peanuts to the Hong Kong Jockey Club).

And the reason that this is an exception which proves the rule rather than falsifying it is that this could only be done in Hong Kong.  Partly because of the way betting works there (it’s a peri-mutual system for those that care; nothing is really gained by knowing what that means other than that it makes it a bit easier to place large bets).  But mainly because Hong Kong is unique in having only two racetracks, one of which is much more important than the other.  It’s also too far away from other racing markets to regularly move horses there.  So it’s pretty much the only place in the word where the same horses race each other, on the same course, very frequently indeed.

This matters, because “horses for courses” isn’t just a fun rhyming thing to say – it’s absolutely fundamental to horse race gambling.  Some horses are good at shorter distances, some are stayers.  Some of them have the brains to adjust their pace on a hill, others will try to keep sprinting and exhaust themselves.  Some of them have a gait that suits muddy conditions, others run better on hard ground.  Et cetera … 

Racecourses are very different.  In the UK, for example, they aren’t even consistent as to whether the horses run clockwise or anticlockwise. The course at Chester is almost circular, which means that racing there is a test of how good a horse is on its front left foot.  Perth has a steep slope up to the finish which always catches out front-runners.  A sharp bend (like the one at Catterick) will confuse and unsettle a horse that hasn’t seen it before, but not one that’s expecting it.  Et cetera …

All of which means that horse racing data has an absolutely massive curse of dimensionality.  If you’re trying to estimate a model to use historical race data to tell you which horse out of a field of eight or nine is likely to show up fastest, then you’d have to, at the very least, take into account the course, distance, “going” (ground conditions) and class of each race.  Since there are also interaction effects (different courses will suit different horses depending on whether it’s muddy or dry, for example), then you’re eating up degrees of freedom very quickly. 

Added to which, there’s a curse of non-stationarity.  You want lots of data points to deal with your curse of dimensionality, but very few horses have more than a dozen starts in a season.  So the more data you collect, the older some of it is.  And a lot can change for a horse in a year – injuries, changes of trainer and the simple effect of maturity and aging.

This is why bookmakers smile when they meet a quant with a system, particularly if they hear that their new customer makes a lot of money playing poker.  Statistical analysis of the British racetrack is basically impossible…. Or is it?

The data issues I’ve outlined make it more or less impossible to get the kind of model that Moneyballers and poker players want, which gives you a single statistically optimal prediction.  But that doesn’t mean the formbook is useless.  There are all sorts of rules of thumb and statistical regularities that can be established.  (For example “The sharp turn at Catterick will always catch out a horse that hasn’t raced there before”, as I said a couple of paragraphs ago).

Really good racing analysts can systematically beat the odds by knowing a lot of these little rules of thumb, being really familiar with the form and having enough experience to know which statistical regularities are most salient for any given race.  They are also good at spotting which races are easiest to analyse and most likely to offer attractive odds, and good at not betting on the other ones.  (I’ll talk about my own system on Friday if you like!).

I think most of the world is more like horse racing than it is like poker. (I notice that when the Data Guys start trying to make money in finance, they tend to gravitate toward derivatives and high-frequency trading.  “Horses for courses” is a phrase you will often hear in the stock market, because companies and industries have even more variety than racecourses do).  That’s why most cybernetic schemes to improve the human condition tend to fail. 

And I think that’s my considered response to a lot of the comments on my James C Scott posts.  To a large extent, the debate about techne and metis, technical quantifiable knowledge versus embedded and tacit skill, is really about the curse of dimensionality.  There’s a point at which, to quote Ben Recht, “math becomes metaphor” and the skill of prediction and management is one of knowing which parts of the mental model to apply; while you learn these things in mathematical terms, the algorithm doesn’t help you any more.

Why people stay after local economies collapse − a story of home among the ghosts of shuttered steel mills by Tracy Walsh The Conversation It was midday on a Saturday, and Simonetta led me from the open front door of her home in southeast Chicago to her sitting room and settled next to her husband, Christopher, […]

The post Why people stay after local economies collapse appeared first on Angry Bear.

He who tests the depth of a stream with both feet must be prepared to swim.

— Ewe proverb

I. Buying Opportunity

The Usher tribe were enamored of commerce, it was all about the money
They flexed their pro-market inclinations rather vigorously
Always to be found looking for the next selling opportunity
They put a price on every aspect of life, it all came naturally

Their singular commercial virtue was a seamless ease with amnesia
Cultural memory was lacking with this lot, in its place lived nostalgia
They'd end up selling end-user certificates to the highest bidder
Even to those whose atrocities they'd conveniently fail to remember

Their praetorian guard maintained that the Ushers only had interests
Friendship for them was transactional per their princes of darkness
Onerous rules and regulations could be ignored when necessary
For when push came to shove, with them it was always monetary

The lesson the rest of the world had learned through hard experience
Was to take their every grand pronouncement with a grain of salt
Lest one be caught wrong-footed and stuck, unrequited, waiting for assistance
Their sweet promises of support were consequently discounted as a result

Still, they believed their own rhetoric, that the customer was always right
High on their own supply when they were dominant, when might made right
For the longest time they were producers, and maintained this direction
But the world had changed following their consultants' mercenary suggestions

It's not that there was a level playing field these days
For the gods have always played favorites come what may
But the advantages they'd long had, their openness and dynamism
Had been trumped with the whole world now engulfed in paroxysm

They'd suffered the highest death toll in the global crisis
Despite being equipped with the greatest advantages
For want of a bolt, they'd forsaken their soul insurance
With a dizzying display of hubris and rank incompetence

Even so, they expected that they could rebrand post-haste and wow
After all, an elephant which is lean is still fatter than a cow
It was just a matter of marketing after the global pause
They'd jump right back to business and merely await the applause

The chief's scribe and the linguist made to ready their next campaign
With the Okyeame onboard the only issue was which slogan to reframe
The new formula, new and improved, there was really no need for subtle hints
The power of wishful thinking meant people would ignore weasel words in the fine print

...

Fifi had built a little emporium with the fruits of his previous compromises
Albeit, in less polite society, those payments might well have been called bribes
His was a going concern even under these trying circumstances
Of isolation protocols, hygiene theater, and social avoidance

He'd heard about the surge in the east and now expected another wave
But the elders had moved on, barely acknowledging the previous close shaves
He could see from the glint in their eyes that a deal was in the making
It was just a matter of patience, opportunity would surely come knocking

He wondered who would accompany that rascal Ananse the Spider
He had struck Fifi as someone who always needed an insider
The disguise of guilelessness that would send you on a fool's errand
His modus operandi in his nefarious dealings was rather transparent

He could envisage the broad outline of the strategy of the trickster
Most likely, a squeeze play pitting the elders against the claims adjuster
And while he waited for the renewed approach of the erstwhile tempter
He recalled those ancient words of wisdom: caveat emptor

Buying Opportunity, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. There's a price to be paid. (spotify version)

• Ain't There Something Money Can't Buy by Young-Holt Unlimited
• Can't Buy Love by Johnny Osborne
• Can't Buy Me Love by The Beatles
• Can't Buy Me by Femi Kuti
• Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money) by Pet Shop Boys
  The boys were appropriately cynical as befits antidotes to the Thatcher-Reagan consensus. In a different genre it would be the musical equivalent of Martin Amis's Money.
• Can't Buy Soul by Hebrew Rogers
• Money Can't Buy It by Annie Lennox
• Who Will Buy? by Jon Lucien
• Buyer's Blues by Billy Byers & Martial Solal
• I'll Buy You A Star by Kenny Burrell
• I'll Buy You A Star by Betty Carter

Buyer's Remorse (Series Index)

A covidious folktale

1. Buying Opportunity
2. Tempting the Town Crier

See previously: Soul Insurance

This folktale is part of a series: In a covidious time.

Next in Part 2: Tempting the Town Crier

File under: humour, satire, culture, observation, folktale, Ananse, storytelling, whimsy, myth, coronavirus, pandemic, Social Living, Things Fall Apart, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, hatchet job, covidious, poetry, toli

Writing log. May 2, 2022