The spread

It ' s been more than fifteen years sincehanging chads dominated discourse, but they made a big impression on me.No one had any idea what hanging chads were, or how they should be interpreted, before the 2000 Presidential election - but as soon as it became clear which interpretation favored Bush, and which interpretation helped Gore, pundits assorted themselves along established party lines. It really showed me there was no over-arching ideology behind what columnists and talking heads were saying - everyone was just supporting their team.It ' s really no different than sports - look at last year ' s discussions of DeflateGate, or recent commentary when the Yankees signed a closer with pending charges of domestic violence. If you love your team, you ' ll find a way to rationalize or dismiss disturbing details. There ' s a small percentage of undecideds, largely indifferent or uninformed - and all the arguments to persuade these folks for or against a position are really just sophisticated cheers for the home team.In sports, gamblers have come up with a clever way of dividing issues right down the middle: the point spread. For each game, the house sets the point spread such that even if one team is much better than another, you ' ll still get maximum participation in betting, with approximately 50% siding with the better team (which has to not just win but overcome the spread) and 50% favoring the worse team (these people are essentially betting that their team is bad but not...
Source: Blogborygmi - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Source Type: blogs