sethist

Yes, they are off base. He deserves leeway due to the untold grief he is enduring, but a statement like that is ridiculous. Thousands of people a day go to jail a day, many of them for breaking unjust laws, and very few of them kill themselves. He was killed by depression/mental illness not by the government. The charges likely exasperated his condition, but without that underlining fragile mental state, he would almost assuredly still be alive today.

The idea is that athletes are rawer, more malleable, more flexible, but riskier and generally less skilled (therefore probably cheaper) employees when compared to true specialists. This makes them good hires for startups.

The article could have benefited from actually saying this.

Silver assumes that the systems fail because the models are bad. O'Neil is instead claiming those are just correlations and not a cause and effect relationship. Basically the models are bad and the systems failed because the people providing the data were corrupt. Using your example: "A<-C" and "B<-C"

Another firm can try to capitalize on the market inefficiencies and hire tons of Brown grads. Although they will likely need to spend more time and money on the hiring process since the candidates aren't as thoroughly prescreened. None of us know if that will really pay off in the end.

Why try so hard to into a school that everyone is applying to when you can instead much more easily get a position at a lower profile school?"

RPI is easier to get into and could still give you challenging and rewarding work, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth the extra effort to get into the more difficult and sought-after position.