Sherman's "Toward a Skill Ratio" -- better if it got there

[creedofhubris]

I am disappointed with Ryne Sherman's piece. It spends much of its time with an introduction and a conclusion rather than on analysis, and it really seems like half an article rather than a full piece.

The intro begins with an analysis of a dictionary definition, which is a technique usually used to expand a piece that is too short.

The piece spends about half of its time getting to the formulas, and it tells us nothing we don't already know. Poker is a game of skill. Baseball is a game of skill. Throwing dice is not a game of skill (generally.) Neither is a lottery. Great.

When it finally gets to the formulas, it doesn't go through the formula and give us a sample calculation.

It includes a cop-out phrase,

"For those unfamiliar with the correlation, a simple web search will yield many results explaining its function."

which would be improved either with a link or an explanation; it should not be our job to track these things down, but rather the article writer's to define his terms.

Finally, it says that the real point of the article, the application of this formula to poker, will come next month.

This would've been a much better article if the meat of the argument, the application of this formula to poker, was included, instead of being separated out to create a second article. As it is, all the background info that's included is not particularly important, and it's expanded in unuseful ways.

Compare this to Tysen Streib's excellent, and much longer, article on continuation bets, which both lays out the background math and the actual results of his research, and which is a much stronger article as a result.

[Sherman]

Creed,
I appreciate your honesty with the article. Believe me, the original intention of the article was to provide the calculations (as a matter of fact, I already have them completed). Due to spacing issues, I felt an original draft of the article had to be cut into two pieces for a few reasons.

First, it would have been nice to only demonstrate the calculations. However, I felt I would be criticized for not fully explaining where those calculations came from. Additionally, while it may seem that I could have simply attached the calculations at the bottom, there are a few more complexities with the calculations that I intend to address next month. Just attaching calculations without dealing with these issues would have been mis-representative.

Second I could not be sure how many of the readers would be familiar with the pearson-product moment correlation. I felt that an explanation of the said correlation beyond what was put in the article would also have been too lengthy and unnecessary. Which is why this phrase,

[ QUOTE ]
"For those unfamiliar with the correlation, a simple web search will yield many results explaining its function."

[/ QUOTE ],

was added. I thought this was the best way to handle readers at different "statistical" education levels because it (1) allows someone who doesn't care to just keep reading, (2) allows someone who already knows what I am talking about to just keep reading, and (3)provides someone who doesn't know but wants to know, a place to find the answer.

In terms of defining my terms, I clearly did so by providing the definition of the formulas. Just mentioning that if anyone wanted to know more about those formulas, they are relatively easy to find.

Again, thanks for your honesty. If you are looking for skill calculations, next month you will not be dissapointed.

Ryne Sherman