Smart
My dad gave me one dollar bill
‘Cause I’m his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
‘Cause two is more than one!
And then i took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes-I guess he don’t know
that three is more than two!
Just them, along came old blind Bates
And just ’cause he can’t see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!
And i took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
and the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!
And then I went and showed my dad,
and he go red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head-
Too proud of me to speak!
-Shel Silverstein
We usually enjoy reading Steve Silver’s blog(we still can’t help but smile when recalling the story of the neo-nazi who lived with a black prostitute in a storage container in his ex-wife’s yard) but were puzzled by his description of a post by Shysterball as “geniusâ€.
Shysterball points out that the Yankees lineup average age would only increase from 32.1 to 34.98 if 34 year old Hideki Matsui were replaced with 60 year old Billy Crystal, and comments “I know the Yankees are an aging team, but wouldn’t you hope that adding a 60 year-old to your lineup would skew that average age up a bit more?â€
Actually, the age of the Yankees lineup is irrelevant.
60(Crystal)-34(Matsui) = 26 years
26/9 = 2.8888888888… years
No matter how young or old the Yankee lineup is, swapping those 2 players will increase the average by exactly 2.88888..
This is what happens when you let idiots like me near a calculator.
It’s probably also worth noting at this point that one of the reasons I went to law school was that I suck at math.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good argument.
You’re not entirely wrong in that that the percentage increase would have been greater with a younger team, but I think you still don’t make the point you intended to. The original fact that the Yankee lineup has an average age of 32.1 is damning enough by itself.