Thursday, February 28, 2013

NHL drafts the wrong players due to birthday bias, study suggests

Feb. 27, 2013 ? A hockey player's birthday strongly biases how professional teams assess his talent, according to a new study by Grand Valley State University researchers. The findings were published in the online journal PLOS ONE.

The research, led by Robert Deaner, associate professor of psychology at Grand Valley, shows that, on average, National Hockey League (NHL) draftees born between July and December are much more likely than those born in the first three months of the year to have successful careers. In particular, 34 percent of draftees were born in the last six months of the year, but these individuals played 42 percent of the games and scored 44 percent of the points accumulated by those in the study. By contrast, those born in the first three months of the year constituted 36 percent of draftees but only played 28 percent of the games and only scored 25 percent of the points.

The study focused on Canadian players because in Canadian youth ice hockey there is a January 1 cut-off date. This means players born later in the year would have been consistently younger than their age group peers.

"There's no doubt that drafting professional athletes is an inexact science," said Deaner. "Plenty of sure-fire first-round picks fizzle while some late-round picks unexpectedly become stars. But our results show that, at least since 1980, NHL teams have been consistently fooled by players' birthdays or something associated with them. They greatly underestimate the promise of players born in the second half of the year, the ones who have always been relatively younger than their peers. For any given draft slot, relatively younger players are about twice as likely to be successful. So if teams really wanted to win, they should have drafted more of the relatively younger players."

Background and Significance

Previous studies have demonstrated relative age effects (RAEs), which occur when those who are relatively older for their age group are more likely to succeed. For example, in elite Canadian youth ice hockey, roughly 40 percent of players are born in the first three months of the year while only 15 percent are born in the last three months. Although RAEs are well established in many sports and educational settings, their underlying causes remain unclear. The new study provides the most direct evidence yet that selection bias is a crucial cause of RAEs. Selection bias means that evaluators, such as teachers and coaches, grant fewer opportunities to relatively younger individuals than is warranted by their talent.

"There are many possible causes of RAEs," said Deaner. "For instance, a youth coach may mainly select relatively older players because those players' greater size means they are actually more likely to help the team. Researchers believe, however, that selection bias is also a big cause of RAEs, but there has never been a direct test of selection bias. We could make this test because we had a good measure of perceived talent, the order or slot in which each player was drafted. And we had good measures of realized talent, how long they were able to stay in the NHL and how many points they scored there. Because relatively younger players consistently performed better than would be expected based on their draft slots, we've shown selection bias."

The researchers admit that they don't fully understand the selection bias they discovered. "We don't know yet why the evaluations of NHL teams are biased, but there are several ways it could work. Because being many months older than one's peers can be a big advantage as a child or early teen, the relatively older players might be more likely to be on the most elite junior teams when they are 17 or 18, and scouts might be swayed by that," said Deaner. "Another possibility, suggested by educational studies, is an 'underdog' effect. This would involve relatively younger individuals developing better work habits so that they improve more in adulthood."

The authors believe their pro hockey results have implications for education. Deaner noted: "We have to be careful about assuming too much because a teacher deciding which children should be tracked into advanced classes is a much different situation than hockey teams assessing which adults are likely to develop into NHL stars. But, for many reasons, one would think that NHL teams should be less biased than educators. First, NHL teams are evaluating adults not children, meaning that relative age differences are proportionally smaller. Second, NHL teams are aware of RAEs, but educators may not be. Third, NHL teams have vast resources to evaluate individuals while educators do not. Fourth, NHL teams pay a steep price for poor evaluation whereas educators may not. So overall, in many situations, evaluations of ability may be greatly colored by an individual's relative age. This may even happen when the teachers and coaches know about RAEs."

Co-authors of the study were Aaron Lowen of Grand Valley State University and Steven Cobley of the University of Sydney.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Grand Valley State University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Robert O. Deaner, Aaron Lowen, Stephen Cobley. Born at the Wrong Time: Selection Bias in the NHL Draft. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (2): e57753 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057753

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/aiKTLbZhmbM/130227183506.htm

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Owner: Dog may have been poisoned at Westminster

NEW YORK (AP) ? A dog owner says she thinks there's a chance her prized pet was deliberately poisoned while competing at the Westminster Kennel Club show, causing it to die several days later.

"It is in the realm of possibility," Lynette Blue told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Blue co-owns a 3-year-old Samoyed named Cruz, and said he probably swallowed poison at Westminster earlier this month. Four days after competing, the dog died, on Feb. 16, while at a show in Colorado.

Blue has worked since the 1970s with Samoyeds, a sturdy, medium-sized breed. She said that while there was no evidence foul play was involved, certain symptoms were consistent with dogs who ingest rat or mouse poison. That was the reason she said she decided against a necropsy ? an autopsy for animals.

"The timeline adds up. There's no other scenario we can come up with other than poison," she said.

Asked if she thought it was intentional, she said: "I don't think we'll ever know."

The dog's death was first reported by The New York Times.

Cruz's handler, Robert Chaffin, told the Times he thought extreme animal rights activists may have been to blame. Members of some animal groups have criticized shows featuring purebred dogs in the past.

In 2010, two members of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stood in the middle of the Westminster best-in-show ring at Madison Square Garden and held protest signs.

But PETA co-founder and president Ingrid Newkirk said "it makes no sense whatsoever" that an animal rights activist would harm an animal.

"It's a fantasy, it's a fallacy," she told the AP by phone Thursday night. "How dare you point a finger and cast aspersions when you haven't a clue."

The veterinarian who treated Cruz, Molly Comiskey, told the Times: "Dogs are dogs. It's not anyone's fault. They eat stuff; they get into things; they make bad decisions."

The 137th Westminster drew 2,721 purebred entries. Cruz, one of 33 Samoyeds list in the show, did not win any ribbons in the best of breed judging.

"We have never, to our knowledge, had an incident at our show where a dog has become ill or was harmed as a result of being poisoned," the kennel club said in a statement.

"After conversation with the co-owner of the dog in question, it was established that the dog left Georgia on Monday and flew to New York, he was exhibited at our show on Tuesday, and flew to Denver on Wednesday morning where he subsequently became ill on Saturday. Unfortunately, no autopsy was performed, so there are a lot of unanswered questions," the statement said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-28-Westminster%20Show-Dog%20Death/id-7497ebd7f5bc42fe828ff4a3c2cf37c8

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As budget cuts loom, is government shutdown next?

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Newport News, Va. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

The Capitol plaza is seen as automatic spending cuts are set to take effect on March 1, in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

(AP) ? With big, automatic budget cuts about to kick in, House Republicans are turning to mapping strategy for the next showdown just a month away, when a government shutdown instead of just a slowdown will be at stake.

Both topics are sure to come up at the White House meeting Friday between President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders, including Republican House Speaker John Boehner. A breakthrough on replacing or easing the imminent across-the-board spending cuts still seems unlikely at the first face-to-face discussion between Obama and Republican leaders this year.

To no one's surprise, even as a dysfunctional Washington appears incapable of averting a crisis over economy-rattling spending cuts, it may be lurching toward another over a possible shutdown.

Republicans are planning for a vote next week on a bill to fund the day-to-day operations of the government through the Sept. 30 end of the 2013 fiscal year ? while keeping in place the new $85 billion in cuts of 5 percent to domestic agencies and 8 percent to the military.

The need to keep the government's doors open and lights on ? or else suffer the first government shutdown since 1996 ? requires the GOP-dominated House and the Democratic-controlled Senate to agree. Right now they hardly see eye to eye.

The House GOP plan, unveiled to the rank and file on Wednesday, would award the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration with their line-by-line budgets, for a more-targeted rather than indiscriminate batch of military cuts, but would deny domestic agencies the same treatment. And that has whipped up opposition from veteran Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee. Domestic agencies would see their budgets frozen almost exactly as they are, which would mean no money for new initiatives such as cybersecurity or for routine increases for programs such as low-income housing.

"We're not going to do that," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. "Of course not."

Any agreement needs to pass through a gantlet of House tea party conservatives intent on preserving the across-the-board cuts and Senate Democrats pressing for action on domestic initiatives, even at the risk of creating a foot-tall catchall spending bill.

There's also this: GOP leaders have calculated that the automatic cuts arriving on Friday need to be in place in order for them to be able to muster support from conservatives for the catchall spending bill to keep the government running. That's because many staunch conservatives want to preserve the cuts even as defense hawks and others fret about the harm that might do to the military and the economy. If the automatic cuts are dealt with before the government-wide funding bill gets a vote, there could be a conservative revolt.

"The overall sequester levels must hold," said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.

Little to no progress has been made so far between House and Senate leaders and the White House, and given the hard feelings engulfing Washington, there's no guarantee that this problem can be solved, even though the stakes ? a shutdown of non-essential government programs after March 27 ? carry more risk than the across-the-board cuts looming on Friday.

The funding plan for the rest of the fiscal year will be a main topic at the White House meeting on Friday, the March 1 deadline day for averting the across-the-board cuts.

Obama, speaking to a group of business executives Wednesday night, said the cuts would be a "tumble downward" for the economy, though he acknowledged it could takes weeks before many Americans feel the full impact of the budget shrinking.

The warring sides in Washington have spent this week assigning blame rather than seeking a bipartisan way out. In a glimpse of the state of debate on Wednesday, Republicans and the White House bickered over whether the cuts would be under way by the time Friday's meeting started. A spokesman for Boehner said they would be in place; the White House countered that Obama would in fact have until midnight Friday to set them in motion.

The cumbersome annual ritual of passing annual agency spending bills collapsed entirely last year ? not a single one of the 12 annual appropriations bills for the budget year that began back in October has passed Congress ? and Congress has to act by March 27 to prevent a partial shutdown of the government.

By freezing budgets for domestic agencies, the Republican plan would deny an increase for a big cybersecurity initiative, additional money to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal and money to build new Coast Guard cutters. GOP initiatives such as more money for the Small Business Administration or fossil fuels research would be hurt as well, but there's little appetite for the alternative, which is to stack more than $1 trillion worth of spending bills together for a single up-or-down vote.

But the GOP move to add the line-by-line spending bills for the Pentagon and veterans' programs to the catchall spending bill would give the military much-sought increases for force readiness and the Veterans Administration additional funding for health care.

That approach has few fans in the White House, which is seeking money to implement Obama's signature efforts to overhaul financial regulation and the nation's health care system, or within the Democratic Senate, where members of the Appropriations Committee want to add a stack of bills covering domestic priorities such as homeland security, NASA and federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI.

"You need balance," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "We feel as strongly about the domestic side as we do defense."

The catchall spending measure, known as a continuing resolution or CR inside Washington, was originally seen as a potential must-pass measure to avert Friday's cuts or make them less severe. But no serious talks to avert the cuts have been under way.

On Thursday, Democrats will force a vote on a measure that would forestall the automatic cuts through the end of the year, replacing them with longer-term cuts to the Pentagon and cash payments to farmers and installing a minimum 30 percent tax rate on income exceeding $1 million. But that plan is virtually certain to be toppled by a GOP-led filibuster vote.

Republicans in turn are considering offering a measure that would give Obama authority to propose a rewrite to the 2013 budget to redistribute the cuts. Obama would be unable to cut defense by more than the $43 billion reduction that the Pentagon currently faces, and would also be unable to raise taxes to undo the cuts. The GOP plan would allow a resulting Obama proposal to go into effect unless Congress passed a resolution to overturn it.

The idea is that money could be transferred from lower-priority accounts to accounts funding air traffic control or meat inspection. But the White House says that such moves would offer only slight relief. At the same time, however, it could take pressure off of Congress to address the sequester.

In the House, where Republicans in the past Congress passed legislation to replace the cuts, Boehner has said it's now up to Obama and the Senate to figure a way out. The Senate never took up the House-passed bills, which expired when the new Congress was seated in January.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-27-Budget%20Battle/id-e416d6f5d5b9401f8bca6135ddf4e15e

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Friday, February 22, 2013

Small jet crash kills 5 in eastern Georgia

Ambulances gather at the old Georgia State Patrol post in Thomson, Ga., near the scene of a plane crash Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2012. An aviation official says a small jet with seven people aboard ran off the end of the runway and crashed at the Thomson-McDuffie County Airport. (AP Photo/The Augusta Chronicle, Todd Bennett)

Ambulances gather at the old Georgia State Patrol post in Thomson, Ga., near the scene of a plane crash Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2012. An aviation official says a small jet with seven people aboard ran off the end of the runway and crashed at the Thomson-McDuffie County Airport. (AP Photo/The Augusta Chronicle, Todd Bennett)

(AP) ? Authorities were investigating after a small jet crashed off the end of a runway after landing in eastern Georgia, killing five people and injuring two.

Thomson-McDuffie County Sheriff Logan Marshall said the jet crashed after 8 p.m. Wednesday. He said the two survivors were taken to area hospitals but did not have information on their conditions. He said the identities of those killed were being withheld pending notification of family members.

The Hawker Beechcraft 390/Premier I departed from Nashville, Tenn., when it crashed just after landing at the Thomson-McDuffie County Airport, about 30 miles west of Augusta, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said in an email.

Seven people were aboard, she told The Associated Press in the email. She told The Augusta Chronicle (http://bit.ly/WbvMGa) that the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate and determine the probable cause of the crash.

The Augusta Chronicle cited Assistant County Fire Chief Stephen Sewell as saying there were at least two survivors identified as a pilot and a passenger. But he provided no additional information about those aboard.

The newspaper also said a brush fire flared near the crash scene, quoting witnesses who reported power outages that prompted a utility to send workers to the site.

The plane was on a flight from John Tune Airport in Nashville, Tenn., to the Thomson-McDuffie airport, Bergen said in her email, adding the aircraft is registered to a company based in Wilmington, Del.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-02-21-Plane%20Crash-Georgia/id-fdce89a418724403a821989051377fdc

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QUESTION OF THE DAY: Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that Americans don't...


QUESTION OF THE DAY: Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that Americans don't need semi-automatic weapons to protect their homes because a couple of blasts from a shotgun will scare off intruders.

He was speaking in an online video as part of a Facebook town hall hosted by Parents Magazine on the administration's strategy for reducing gun violence, which he has led at the direction of President Barack Obama.

Do you think this is good advice coming from the Vice President?

Source: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151438122412290&set=a.10150258659942290.343029.73949382289&type=1

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Sunday, February 17, 2013

AC Milan vs Parma Live Streaming 2013 Italian Serie A Football

AC Milan vs Parma Live Streaming

AC Milan Injuries and Suspensions

Out: Stephan El Shaarawy, Marco Amelia, Luca Antonini, Robinho, Daniele Bonera (injured) Massimo Ambrosini (suspended)

Parma Injuries and Suspensions

Out: Antonio Mirante, McDonald Mariga, Fabiano Santacroce, Daniele Galloppa (injured)

Match Date/Time: Friday 15 February 2013, 20:45 local, 14:45 E.T.

Venue: Stadio Giuseppe Meazza (San Siro), Milan, Italy

TV: Sky Calcio 1 (Italy), beIN Sport, beIN SPORT en Espa?ol (U.S.)

AC Milan vs Parma Live Streaming 2013 Italian Serie A Football Link 1

AC Milan vs Parma Live Streaming 2013 Italian Serie A Football Link 2

Source: http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/ac-milan-vs-parma-live-streaming-2013-italian-serie-football

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