It is mind boggling seeing people still claiming vax didn’t work, or measures like masks and social distancing infringed their “freedom”. Man we are beyond cooked. We are in the oven 4 hours after cooking was done

Kostas Pelechrinis@kpelechrinis.bsky.social · 3d ago

Since midterms are coming and we are back at the “we were scammed with the jabs”, I think this points to another example of why probabilistic thinking is a must. Fauci et al. completely botched the communication around the vaccines. And I think this might have been deliberately on their side to

Since midterms are coming and we are back at the “we were scammed with the jabs”, I think this points to another example of why probabilistic thinking is a must. Fauci et al. completely botched the communication around the vaccines. And I think this might have been deliberately on their side to

You used to know elections were approaching when cities suddenly became massive construction sites (ofc only for the work to stop once the election was over). Now a few minutes on social media is enough to see the politics of fear in full swing and know elections are coming

This is a pretty interesting experiment. It illustrates why human expertise remains important in causal data science. Without informed guidance an LLM may/will rely on prior/recalled knowledge rather than reasoning from the data. erdogant.substack.com/p/can-llms-d...

Can LLMs Discover Cause and Effect? A Benchmark Against Bayesian Models and the Problem of Knowledge Leakage.

LLMs may generate convincing answers, but how trustworthy are the results? Hidden knowledge acquired during pre-training can influence conclusions without the user realizing it.

erdogant.substack.com

With the usual suspects like Gaines and Travis parading Cunningham's comments, it's worth putting a few things in perspective for those that like to put their brains to thinking rationally: 1. This whole thing has nothing to do with women's sports and supporting women. For god's shake Travis [1/5]

Argentina is known for its approachable yet age-worthy wines. Clos de Rosario Vintage 1987 is their best 🐐 🍷 Enjoy a glass with all publicly available #Messi goals (thanks to StatsBomb) You can also interact with the visualization here: sites.pitt.edu/kpele/messi_...

All (the ones publicly available from Statsbomb) of #Messi 's career goals in an interactive viz. If you have all the goals, you can upload a json file with the data (format described and file is not stored anywhere on the server) and see the new viz. sites.pitt.edu/~kpele/messi...

ok everyone is talking about Messi, but after the 2018 world cup I was invited and gave 3 seminars on sports and football analytics in Argentina. Since then they have won everything and playing again at the final (which I hope they win also). Coincidence? Well, yes 😂 But had the 6-7 meme well ahead😅

This football myth has beeb busted before afaik in many different ways but here is one with Bayesian hierarchical modeling 412sportsanalytics.wordpress.com/2026/07/11/b...

Big Man, Small Edge: What the Data Actually Say About Tall Goalkeepers and Penalties

Every pundit has said it at some point during a shootout: “you want a big goalkeeper back there”, “height fills the frame”, “height makes the target look smaller&#8221…

412sportsanalytics.wordpress.com

1987 Clos de Rosario 🐐🍷

RBFA should do the funniest thing ever: challenge birthright citizenship in the US. It will short circuit the whole WH 😂 /s

Well since I am not travelling to Greek islands again this summer, how else would I feed my crave but with an analysis including them. And it turns out that nature is the worst gerrymanderer medium.com/@kpelechrini...

The Gerrymander Archipelago

I applied the same math US courts use to detect gerrymandering to the Aegean and Ionian. The results are alarming. The culprit has been…

medium.com

It seems that my suggestion for solving the STEM pipeline issue might have to be the standard for ALL students if this trend keeps up. Education is in a really sad state... medium.com/@kpelechrini...

The Economist@economist.com · last mo.

Some at college or university are testing no better than ten-year-olds

Strange. I thought spreadsheets were supposed to be a coping mechanism for people who can’t play. www.wsj.com/sports/socce...

The Harvard Data Nerd Defending America’s Goal at the World Cup

Matt Freese, who holds an Ivy League economics degree, came out of practically nowhere to secure the job as the U.S. national team’s starting goalkeeper—and his analytical approach has been integral t...

wsj.com

Messi is aging like a 1987 Clos de Rosario 🐐🍷

Galis set some unbreakable records during that (& following) runs. The only way to *try* stopping Galis was “box and 1” BUT the box was for Galis and the 1 for his teammates. This is how great he was. On ball, off ball, transition you name it he did it. He is *basketball* for us Greeks (& Europeans)

Kostas Pelechrinis@kpelechrinis.bsky.social · 2mo ago

39 years ago today Greece won its first European championship in basketball. A championship that boosted Greek hoops to unimaginable heights the following decades. A true David against Goliath moment. Greece beat Yugoslavia twice during the tournament and USSR in the final. youtu.be/rDHWsgOKnPU?...

39 years ago today Greece won its first European championship in basketball. A championship that boosted Greek hoops to unimaginable heights the following decades. A true David against Goliath moment. Greece beat Yugoslavia twice during the tournament and USSR in the final. youtu.be/rDHWsgOKnPU?...

Hellas - USSR 103-101 Final (Eurobasket) 14/6/87 EΡΤ (16:9 HD)

YouTube video by Aris History Channel

youtu.be

Big part of the NBA finals story are the Spurs double-digit leads blown leads. But this has become more frequent occurrence in modern NBA. And there are reasons for it medium.com/@kpelechrini...

No Lead Is Safe Anymore

Despite claims that the modern NBA is repetitive and predictable, first-half leads have become larger, more extreme, and more likely to…

medium.com

Got to love seeing Mike Brown on the biggest stage explicitly acknowledging the role of luck! #NBA #NBAFinals

Kostas Pelechrinis@kpelechrinis.bsky.social · 2mo ago

If you want to learn more about the skill paradox and in general the role of luck and the interaction with skill in several environments I cannot recommend enough "The success equation" by Michael Mauboussin

If you want to learn more about the skill paradox and in general the role of luck and the interaction with skill in several environments I cannot recommend enough "The success equation" by Michael Mauboussin

Kostas Pelechrinis@kpelechrinis.bsky.social · 2mo ago

With the 8th different #NBA champion coming up in 8 years (& multiple different teams w deep playoff runs every one of these seasons), this era shapes up to be a great example of the skill paradox: as the aggregate level of skill improves, the difference between he best & the average narrows. [1/3]

With the 8th different #NBA champion coming up in 8 years (& multiple different teams w deep playoff runs every one of these seasons), this era shapes up to be a great example of the skill paradox: as the aggregate level of skill improves, the difference between he best & the average narrows. [1/3]

We tend to give skill much more weight when attributing success. The uncomfortable reality is that luck plays just as big of a role (and sometimes bigger) 412sportsanalytics.wordpress.com/2026/05/31/t...

The Spurs, Lottery Luck, and Winning the Right Lotteries

When people talk about NBA lottery luck, they usually focus on one thing: how many spots a team moved up. But that treats all lottery wins as equal. They aren’t. Winning the No. 1 pick in a f…

412sportsanalytics.wordpress.com

In a few months the Blazers' FO will be: Claude Smith, Gemini Johnson and Grok Jones.

muckmaster@plantwarlock.bsky.social · 2mo ago

incredible speed run to worst owner in the league status

If you are interested in Bayesian analysis and the Bayesian framework in general (which you should imo) I've put together an open course on coursera. Check it out here: www.coursera.org/specializati... #Bayesian #MachineLearning #DataScience

Something strange is happening. My reviewer 2's reports all of a sudden read like coming from an English major, with its em dashes and several "viable paths here"...very strange #Academia

Two textbook ways to punish defenses showing 2 on ballscreens by #AEKBC First out of short roll punishing weak side help with baseline cuts. If they take away the short roll with a tag, “relay” pass and a baseline cut will also do the job

It's really interesting to me that regardless of how many years I've been far from Greece, #AEKBC will always be central to my mood. I do not know when I will get over this final loss - if I ever will honestly. My wife's reaction "You're a 43 years old man. What is wrong with you?" says everything 😭

AI isn't really substituting learning but it can absolutely facilitate it in many aspects. One of them is virtual TAs. I built a RAG-based TA for my #MachineLearning course that answers questions based on lecture material infosci2595-ml-assistant.streamlit.app [1/2]

These lottery changes are nonesense. They make the assumption that it is easy to be the worst team on the league if you try. It is not (mainly because there will be a truly worse team). The teams that are actually intentionally tanking are typically in the 4-10 range and they are getting rewarded...