Ohtani sits at unprecedented 48 HRs / 48 SBs, but we want 50. Why?

[Jimmy Higgins]

Baseball superstar Ohtani is on the verge of possibly reaching an accolade never before seen in baseball. Keep in mind, most accomplishments in baseball have already happened. So when one looks at something that is unprecedented, it has substantial meaning. A 50-50 season of 50 HRs and 50 SBs is mindboggling. Only a few have done a 40-40, it even has a name, the 40-40 club.

But here is the thing, Ohtani's 48-48 is already unprecedented! So why is there this drive to 50-50. In cricket, 50 and 100 are milestones. And there is huge disappointment with a batter being stumped at 98 runs. He gets the applause regardless when walking off, but 100, he gets bonus applause. 98 is great, but 100 is an accolade. Back to baseball, there is a universe of perceived distance between batting .299 and .301. For running, my one regret is my fastest mile was 5:08, and not breaking the 5:00 mile. If one looks at it in second 308 verse 300... oh fuck... another round number. Regardless, 8 seconds off of 308 isn't that much time. I can only imagine the poor schlump who finished at 5:00.

So, why? Clearly it is psychological. Numbers can be presented in many ways that illicit different reactions to what is the exact same thing. We are manipulated this way with pricing of food, goods, and famously gasoline who toy with humans with the 0.9 of a cent. WashPo has an article on it. Interestingly back to baseball, according to the article, a batter is 4 times more likely to bat .300 for the year than .299. It matters that much!

RPI did a study on numbers and perception, there is a ton of overlap in that link with the WashPo link.

Sadly, it seems there isn't actually a known reason, as it hasn't been studied much.

While plenty of previous studies have looked at the way numbers are described and the words used alongside them, the new research tackles the numbers themselves – an area that hasn't been thoroughly examined before now.

And that means there's much more to come in this field of study: in this latest research, test participants were only assessed using standard economic research questions rather than with specific scenarios, which is one option to explore in the future.

Clearly there is something going on, whether in ease of remembering or how our brain processes and organizes data. Hopefully we'll get a better feel for it, maybe by the 10th paper on the subject.

What do you think sirs?

 

[steve_bank]

Something I remember from marketing and numbers.

I forget the exact numbers.

More people may buy something priced at $99.99 instead of 95.00.

In the 80s as competing software for name brands appeared at lower prices better performing products at lower prices did not sell. People equated too low a price with inferior performance.

 

[pood]

Baseball superstar Ohtani is on the verge of possibly reaching an accolade never before seen in baseball. Keep in mind, most accomplishments in baseball have already happened. So when one looks at something that is unprecedented, it has substantial meaning. A 50-50 season of 50 HRs and 50 SBs is mindboggling. Only a few have done a 40-40, it even has a name, the 40-40 club.

But here is the thing, Ohtani's 48-48 is already unprecedented!

Not to detract from the main point of your of your post, but 48-48 is only unprecedented for that specific combination of numbers, which adds to 96. Last year Ronald Acuna had 41 homers and 73 stolen bases, adding to 114 and truly unprecedented, It made him the founding and so far only member of the 40/70 club.

 

[bilby]

It made him the founding and so far only member of the 40/70 club

Which is (I assume, I know zero about baseball) impressive; But the central question of the thread is "Why doesn't it make him the founding and so far only member of the 41/73 club?"

Why do we think 70 is a more noteworthy number than 73? 73 is not only bigger than 70*; 73 is also objectively a far better number.



As subsequently proven by Pomerance and Spicer, 73 is the ONLY number that has both the Product Property and the Mirror Property, defined as:

For a positive integer n, let p_n denote the nth prime number. We say p_n has the product property if the product of its base-10 digits is precisely n. For any positive integer x, we define rev(x) to be the integer whose sequence of base-10 digits is the reverse of the digits of x. For example, rev(1234) = 4321 and rev(310) = 13. We say p_n satisfies the mirror property if rev(p_n) = p_rev(n).

So, given that 73 is in every way superior (as a choice of arbitrary number) to 70, what is it that makes the vast majority of humans (as represented by the obviously and trivially more than adequate sample of @pood out of eight billion**) prefer to set 70 as one of the criteria for membership of an exclusive club, and/or as a target towards which to strive, when the founder and sole member of that club has also reached 73?











* Someone please check my math here

**for any reasonable value of @pood, currently estimated to be approximately one, subject to experimental confirmation

 

[pood]

It made him the founding and so far only member of the 40/70 club

Which is (I assume, I know zero about baseball) impressive; But the central question of the thread is "Why doesn't it make him the founding and so far only member of the 41/73 club?"

Why do we think 70 is a more noteworthy number than 73? 73 is not only bigger than 70*; 73 is also objectively a far better number.



As subsequently proven by Pomerance and Spicer, 73 is the ONLY number that has both the Product Property and the Mirror Property, defined as:

For a positive integer n, let p_n denote the nth prime number. We say p_n has the product property if the product of its base-10 digits is precisely n. For any positive integer x, we define rev(x) to be the integer whose sequence of base-10 digits is the reverse of the digits of x. For example, rev(1234) = 4321 and rev(310) = 13. We say p_n satisfies the mirror property if rev(p_n) = p_rev(n).

So, given that 73 is in every way superior (as a choice of arbitrary number) to 70, what is it that makes the vast majority of humans (as represented by the obviously and trivially more than adequate sample of @pood out of eight billion**) prefer to set 70 as one of the criteria for membership of an exclusive club, and/or as a target towards which to strive, when the founder and sole member of that club has also reached 73?











* Someone please check my math here

**for any reasonable value of @pood, currently estimated to be approximately one, subject to experimental confirmation

Well that’s a good thing about 73, then, because Barry Bonds holds the single-season homer record of 73, although he cheated by using PEDs to get there.

 

[blastula]

The 69-69 club would be more impressive.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The 69-69 club would be more impressive.

Wouldn't that require being bisexual?

 

[rousseau]

It's a social thing, round numbers give us a reason to celebrate in an otherwise (usually) difficult life. It's just for fun. We did it because we wanted to, and we keep doing it because we like doing it.

I don't think there's any reason beyond that.

 

[pood]

Then there’s the 700 Club. And I’m not talking about Bonds, Aaron, Ruth and Pujols.

 

[steve_bank]

From Morse Code and Amateur Radio.

At the end of a contact with a friend, most hams will call out a hearty “73.” It’s so popular that you may see ham radio operators sign “73” at the bottom of an email or even social media post.

The formal definition of 73 is “Best Regards” – it’s a nice way to say goodbye that is unique to amateur radio.

But, have you ever stopped to think why we use that number to end a contact? The answer takes us all the way back to the days of landline telegraphy.

The Guide also defines the message 73. Today, we take this to mean “best regards,” but in those days, the literal definition was quite different from the definition we have today. In 1857, 73 meant literally, “My love to you.” Even though it stood for a flowery sentiment, telegraph operators adopted this code as a way to greet each other on the wire and to wish

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Something I remember from marketing and numbers.

I forget the exact numbers.

More people may buy something priced at $99.99 instead of 95.00.

In the 80s as competing software for name brands appeared at lower prices better performing products at lower prices did not sell. People equated too low a price with inferior performance.

The reality is that most of the time if a price is too good something's wrong. And in the 80s the software market wasn't well enough developed for people to really be able to judge.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Something I remember from marketing and numbers.

I forget the exact numbers.

More people may buy something priced at $99.99 instead of 95.00.

In the 80s as competing software for name brands appeared at lower prices better performing products at lower prices did not sell. People equated too low a price with inferior performance.

The reality is that most of the time if a price is too good something's wrong. And in the 80s the software market wasn't well enough developed for people to really be able to judge.

We see round numbers as thresholds, so if something is just below it, there can be a significance in our mind regarding that. Where as $99.99 is just below $100... $95 is potentially perceived as being a lot more than $90... and not even being equated to $100 at all mentally.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

We like round numbers because they’re easier to do arithmetic with, they’re easier to remember, we encounter them regularly (e.g. our currency, the weights at the gym), etc.

I noted in another thread that I’m 25,000 days old today. It’s a memorable milestone. 25,001, meh.

 

[Jokodo]

We like round numbers because they’re easier to do arithmetic with, they’re easier to remember, we encounter them regularly (e.g. our currency, the weights at the gym), etc.

I noted in another thread that I’m 25,000 days old today. It’s a memorable milestone. 25,001, meh.

Days? Those arbitrary stretches of time, usually 86 400 seconds but sometimes 90000 or 82800 when moving to and from DST or 864001 when there's a leap second? And possibly soon enough 86399 when they have to introduce a negative leap second? And even the average length is all wrong: if we wanted It to define the Earth's rotation period, It'd have to be just over four minutes longer. We are literally missing out a full day a year due to this. This is of course because we are tracking not the rotations of the earth, but the time from noon to noon in a particular location. But we are doing that all wrong too. Solar days vary in length by quite a bit due to the Earth's elliptical orbit- in some seasons, the earth has to rotate more beyond a full rotation to make up for its longer path along the orbit during that day. What you are thinking are *average* *solar* days. That's two qualifiers removed from days-days. And even sidereal days vary slightly in length, not just through the seasons but with systematic biases long term. On the one hand, there's a long term trend for them to get longer, because the earth is, through the tides, leaking sind of its angular momentum to the moon, which is the reason we have leap seconds in the first place. But in recent years its accelerating due to processes that redistribute the mass in the surface and/ or in the mantle, with glacier melt possibly being a factor - which is why they are exploring the concept of a negative leap seconds. I could go on but that would be nerdy.

To cut a it short and simplify it for the man in the street: "days" are cargo cult science. The only real measure of time is seconds. Real, actual seconds that have physically passed, without pretending some seconds never happened. We can still use "day" as a shorthand for "86 400s", but that's it. If after 10k years, local solar noon is at 13:30, we'll long have adapted by shifting our working hours. If our civilisation survives long enough for the mismatch to become noticing within a year, we can simply redefine "day" to stand for 86410 seconds while our current system would have to run amoc with leap seconds.

You seem to have missed the 2 billion second mark, as well as the 2³¹ mark. You would have to set a spectacular age record to mark your 2³²nd second, so that's a once in lifetime opportunity you wasted by focusing on those "days", as if there were anything real about them.