baseball
Moneyball
01/29/08 13:59 Categories: Assessment
I know that everyone on the East Coast is hyperfocusing on the Superbowl, which I'll watch, but, really, I'm just counting the days to spring training.
In fact, baseball and education are amazingly similar.
❝He [Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay] knows human factors affect the numbers radically. Context is partially external (in baseball, factors like ball park effects, weather, a humidor or not) but it's vastly internal (human players as individuals and as part of the team and their individual quirks and personal strengths and weaknesse
He knows the numbers only take you so far and that you have to go farther than that to achieve excellence. Maddon doesn't lose sight of the vast pool of non-numeric data out there...that goes into his pool from which to draw❞ (Management by Baseball)
Tony LaRussa, while not exactly a Moneyball proponent, gives a great quote.
❝The 'Moneyball' kind of stuff has its place, but so does the human," La Russa said by telephone from Pittsburgh. "Really, the combination is the answer.❞
As teachers, principals, administrators, researchers and policy wonks, we all need to remember that data can help us improve education without being so data-driven as to lose sight of good teaching.