Derek Thompson Profile picture
Jan 21 13 tweets 5 min read
Last week, I asked: What's the most incredible, statistical-outlier accomplishment in U.S. major sports history?

I got several thousand responses. Here are my top 10.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
10. The 2010 San Diego Chargers

As far as I know, only one team in professional sports history has finished 1st in offense, 1st in defense, and also missed the playoffs.
9. Bob Beamon's record-breaking long jump in the 1968 Olympics.

Hard to think of another sports achievement so outlierish that officials had to stop the game to figure out WTF just happened and the player, upon learning of the record, was so shocked that he suffered a seizure
8. Shohei Ohtani's 2021 season

People compare Ohtani to a modern Babe Ruth. But what Ohtani did was even stranger and more outlandish than anything Ruth accomplished in a single season.
7. Barry Bonds' 2001-2004 statistics

Yes, I know, he was on all of the steroids. But his intentional walk records—read to the bottom of this screenshot!—are still some of the most ludicrous things to ever happen in sports.
6. Cy Young’s wins and complete games records

Cy threw 749 complete games. No current pitcher has thrown 4+ since 2018. It would take a modern ace more years of peak performance to break Cy's CG record than the total number of years that baseball has existed.
5. Nolan Ryan

He played forever, struck out everybody, and walked everybody else.
4. Tiger Woods' 1997-2013 run

Tiger Woods is the only player in modern history to win all four majors in a row and the only player to win any major by 10 or more strokes. In fact, he did that twice: in the 1997 Masters and 2000 U.S. Open.
3. Babe Ruth's 1920s statistics don't make any sense.

In two different years, he hit more home runs than any other team. That’s just stupid.
2. Tied for second, we have Wilt Chamberlain's insane 1960s stats and Bill Russell's untouchable 1960s championship run.

Sorry for all the words. There are just ... a lot of totally untouchable records here.
1. This is it.

The most statistically impressive record in US sports history.

Wayne Gretzky—the NHL’s all-time leader in goals, assists, and points—has so many more assists than No. 2 that if he never scored a goal in his entire career, he’d still be all-time leader in points.
A Tom Brady stat for the road:

“The NFL record for career completions is 67.8%. Brady has made the conference championship 73.7% of starting seasons. Brady makes the conference championship at a higher rate than any QB completes passes.” @RealAlexBarth

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Addendum:

To everybody pointing out that Gretzky is a Canadian who set some of these records for a Canadian team: Correct!

Perhaps I should say this is a list of statistical achievements by Americans or for organizations currently headquartered in the U.S. :)

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More from @DKThomp

Jan 22
Many thanks to @JimPethokoukis for interviewing me about my abundance agenda

fasterplease.substack.com/p/-doomsday-ec…

If you want a 1-paragraph summary of the abundance agenda and how it makes contact with 2022's problems, here's my best shot —> Image
This is the original abundance agenda article

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Image
The abundance agenda is a public policy platform.

But it's also a mentality—experiments over ideology; inventing over venting—that can extend to the private sector.

Take, for example, the blossoming of science-funding experiments in Silicon Valley—>

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Read 4 tweets
Jan 21
New pod: @JamesFallows joins the show to talk about the Democrats' very rough week

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/202…

- the deep story of the voting rights bill
- a clinic on US filibuster history
- Biden polling exegesis
- negativity bias vs. agency bias in political media
Our discussion toward the end about news biases was one of the most interesting conversations I've had about political media in a while.

In short:

1. The press has a negativity bias (duh).
2. That's in part bc audiences have a negativity bias.
3. Media also has "agency bias."
News orgs can A/B test headlines with positive and negative frames. I've done it. It's clear that readers click more when the framing is negative. You can see this on Twitter, too.

Our (the media's) negativity bias both drives and reflects your (the audience's) negativity.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 20
Abundance requires innovation.

Innovation begins with science.

But scientific funding in the U.S. is broken—it's too slow, risk-averse, and old.

I wrote about a surprising coalition of tech founders and star scientists who are trying to fix it.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
What's the problem with U.S. scientific funding?

There are 4.

1. The trust problem
2. The specialization problem
3. The silo problem
4. The experiment problem
1. The trust problem

Liberals say "trust science!" but our science-funding programs don't trust scientists. We wrap them in rules that restrains their most novel research.

A new solution: ARC's open-ended, no strings attached funding (via @SKonermann, @patrickc, & @pdhsu)
Read 7 tweets
Jan 18
New pod on the future of movie theaters, ESPN, Disney, Apple TV+, Netflix, and more with @RichLightShed

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

Feat.

- Is this it for movie theaters?
- Why ESPN might be a bad long-term fit for Disney
- Why Apple TV+ is poised for a breakout year
@RichLightShed .@RichLightShed: By building a subscriber base twice as large as the biggest films of all time, Netflix isn’t just disrupting movie theaters—it’s changing what stars and audiences consider “movies” in the first place
@RichLightShed In which @RichLightShed proposes a queasy question about ESPN and all of sports TV:

If renting rights and steaming sports is such a slam-dunk deal, how come Netflix—the company with the most users and the best data— is (so far) mostly staying out of the game?
Read 4 tweets
Jan 14
How Did (Almost) Everybody Get Inflation So Wrong?

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pla…

- Biden admin: wrong
- Most economists: wrong
- Investors: wrong
- Bank analysts: wrong
- Biden critics: wrong (missed the boom)
- Bitcoin bros: wrong (beat by equities post-3/21)

Everybody was wrong!
In today's ep, @awealthofcs and @michaelbatnick join to talk about why '21 boomflation—a roaring economy plus 40-yr high price growth—was the story ~nobody saw coming.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eve…

Most inflation-watchers missed the boom; most boom-predictors whiffed on inflation.
Today's ep is partly inspired by @jasonfurman, who (along with @ModeledBehavior) not only got 2021 about as right as anybody I spoke too, but also has written cogently about how and why just about everybody missed the dynamics underlying inflation

Read 4 tweets
Jan 12
This is one of the most important articles I'll write all year—and the most complete framework for how I'm thinking about progress, public policy, and a better future for all Americans:

America needs an "abundance agenda"

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Think about how often scarcity has been the story of the pandemic:

- First, we were told to not wear masks, bc there weren't enough.
- Then we were told to not get booster shots, bc there weren't enough.
- Now some ppl are worried about hoarding tests, bc there aren't enough.
Now think about how supply side snafus have also become a major storyline in the economy

- We didn't invest in port technology, and now we have a supply bottleneck at the ports
- We watched legal immigration collapse for years, and now we have a labor shortage
Read 7 tweets

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