Baseball statistics question: which is a better predictor of strikeouts thrown by Pitcher A in an upcoming game?:
(1) Total strikeouts per game of starting pitch for Team A?
(2) Total strikeouts per game of Team B's starting lineup?

And in general, what bodes better for your team? A better pitcher, or worse opponents?

I feel like a super in-depth analysis could probably lead to some gambling opportunities as well as satisfaction of curiosity...

My Census Question

OK, so the Census is coming up next year. Hypothetical situation: I think my state is great. By and large, I love the Congressmen it elects, and I love the presidential candidates for whom it casts its electoral votes. Furthermore, I think when federal money comes its way, it spends it more responsibly in ways that create more jobs and help more people than most other states.

In this situation, I have one heck of an incentive to lie when the Census people come a-knocking or a-calling or a-mailing or, G-d forbid, a-Tweeting or a-Facebook poking, or however they do it these days. Because if I say I live with my roommate, his girlfriend, both of my girlfriends, and a family of 14 recently arrived (but perfectly legal!) immigrants, I'm doing my part to help my state, and through its superior voting and fiscal responsibility, the country. After all, Congressional representation and allotted electoral votes are directly related to the population of a state as calculated by the decannual (if that's not a word it is now) US Census. Furthermore, federal funding that gets divided up among states will sometimes be at least in part allocated according to relative population figures.

So if I want to have increased influence in steering my country in the right direction (not to mention preventing more Department of Education funds from finding their way to Kansas high schools where they'll be used to purchase periodic tables beginning with Jesus, Oxygen, and Abstinence and biology and history textbooks which both begin exactly 6,000 years ago), shouldn't I do my patriotic duty and generously round up the number of free persons residing in my domicile?

My BurgerMap

www.awesomeopolis.com/burgermap

BurgerMap Philly is here! Around 40 Philadelphia burger-serving locations rated and reviewed by yours truly on a color-coded Google map. This is an idea I've had for a while, but only recently got to work on. Right now it's a Beta version in the sense that I'm still playing around with it, and also in the sense that I don't have nearly enough burgers rated.

Comments? Suggestions? Suggestions for future burgers to rate? Disagreements? Post them here.

I wish this song could play for me every morning when I get into work...

Just posted on my new blogging project. Though it might appeal to readers here as well. It has graphs!

A new song to learn your state capitals. Any views expressed about Harrisburg Pennsylvania in this video that appear to correspond with my own are purely coincidental.

My post on surging army recruitment seems to have gotten a lot of attention (though I'm not sure anyone got or liked my "surge" pun). I thought people who are thinking about modern military policy might also be interested in this table of military expenditures per capita by nation. The United States is not, as many would predict, first. It's third. #1 is predictable, but #2 surprised me.