Artificial Intelligence

Date: 2/15/2011
Watching: Hornets @ Warriors
There was an article today in the New York Times about "Watson," the computer playing Jeopardy against a couple of Jeopardy champions. The headline of the article was "Robot Botches Geography on 'Jeopardy!'" Only, when you read the article, it turns out that the "robot" is actually crushing the two humans, and it just so happened the only one it got wrong was Final Jeopardy. And it didn't even bet very much, so it's still way ahead.

So now I'm watching the Warriors play the Hornets, and they're making a huge showing so far, after getting down 15 early, they have gone on a rampage, and are currently up 8 in the 3rd. And one of the key sparks to the whole comeback was Jeremy Lin, who's already been sent down to the D-League this year, coming off the bench and getting a couple rebounds and one nice layup. Nothing that will show up in the box score. And I know SABR types (of which I am one, I swear!) hate the cliche about things that don't show up in the box score, but in this case, it's really true. Not just the box score, but any statistical analysis you come up with can't capture the fact that Jeremy Lin is a gigantic fan favorite (he's the first Chinese-American NBA player ever, and went to Harvard, he was made for the Bay), and the game was at home, and the crowd went absolutely wild. Because they know he's a marginal player, and they know that he could just fail to make it, get cut from the team and never play in the NBA again. So they're always pulling mightily for him to prove that he belongs, and today when he played what was really just a competent shift off the bench, the crowd went nuts, and it's stayed that way ever since, and it's affected the game, the Hornets look completely out of sorts. But then, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Watson could figure all that out from the box score.