Ryan Anderson

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is a marketing director based in Atlanta, GA (although he still tells everyone he is from Maine). At various points in his life, he has done much more interesting things like being a professional poker player and helping lead the grassroots fan movement that brought an MLS team to Atlanta. He also writes an irregularly published newsletter called Proper Tack that touches on all these topics and more.Ryan here. Nothing has been more impactful for the trajectory of professional sports than television. TV contracts unleashed billions of dollars of revenue, turned local attractions into major brands, and made athletes into global icons.Increased TV viewership led to increased investment in the production of broadcasts. We now have pre-game shows telling us what is going to happen, sideline reporters telling us what is happening, post-game shows telling us what happened, and an ever-increasing number of camera angles and overlays to keep us engaged. One second-order effect of this shift has been millions of people seeing the mistakes of referees and umpires. And some of them were pretty bad.Sports, like most competitions, need rules to maintain order. When we think about those rules we tend to think of the big ones: A soccer ball that crosses over the sideline is out of bounds, a shot in basketball only counts if it’s made before the shot clock expires, and a football may only be thrown forward by a player who is behind the line of scrimmage. The beauty of these rules is that they’re all pretty simple and objective. For the most part, the rules of sport work this way to make it easier for both the players and those enforcing the rules to keep track of the action.To that end, these objective rules made for a good way to introduce video review of close plays. The NBA, for instance, rolled out video review in 2002 as a way to ensure that a shot left a player’s hands before time expired. Tennis added its Hawk-Eye system in 2008, allowing players to challenge a certain number of line judge calls that they disagreed with. Humans are fallible, and replay can help ensure sports remain as fair as possible.And that’s what all fans want, right? A true contest of athletics governed by the rules of the sport. Let the best team win.Why is this interesting?The answer, as you might have guessed, is no. Not all fans want that, and the current controversy around video assistant referee (VAR) in European football is the perfect example. One objective rule the English Premier League decided to tackle with VAR this season is the call of offside.A quick primer on offside calls: For a player to be eligible to receive a pass, there must be at least two defending players between them and the goal. One of these defending players is almost always the goalie, so then you have to make sure at least one “outfield” defender is behind the attacker.As anyone that grew up playing or watching the game knows, this is one of the trickiest calls to get right as you have to look across the whole field to judge whether the offensive player is even an inch past the furthest defending player. There’s an assistant referee on each side of the field whose primary job is to stay in line with the deepest defender and raise a flag if an offensive player being passed the ball is between that defender and the goal before the ball is kicked to them.While this is a tough call to make in real-time, video review allows us to see rather definitively whether or not a player was offside at the time a pass was played. And, as you would expect, people hate it.Their complaints typically boil down to one of two arguments1. “The call still isn’t right”Due to frame rates and video quality, video review for offside calls isn’t perfect. But even tennis’s Hawk-Eye system has a 0.5mm margin of error, and very rarely do fans or players complain about that. Plus, while it’s easy to cherry-pick the extremely close examples and argue that they were wrong, the vast majority of video reviews do provide a clear decision.2. “Video review is ruining the game”This is the one that best captures the anger fans have for VAR. Beyond the change in viewing experience (reviews disrupt play, which is especially jarring in a constant-motion sport like soccer), the precision the system allows referees feels unnatural. The argument from the most vocal fans isn’t that review ruins the game by changing correct decisions to incorrect ones, but rather that it adds an accuracy that goes beyond human perception and is, therefore, altering the shape of the game itself.We accept that not every call will be accurate, just like we accept that not every putt in golf will get made. We accept the idea that “holding could get called on every play in the NFL if the officials wanted” because not calling every hold makes the sport watchable. We are also generally confident that the most egregious examples will almost always get penalized, which makes the game as fair as it needs to be.If leagues wanted 100% accuracy on objective rules, they could move to fully automating those calls. For instance, tennis could let Hawk-Eye automatically call every shot, or Major League Baseball could have a robot call balls-and-strikes (which, by the way, would speed up the game while removing 14 missed calls per game). But fans don’t want perfectly objective sports, particularly if it comes at the expense of feeling like the players are deciding who wins. It’s the same reason strike zones expand in close baseball games, and fewer fouls are called in the final two minutes of an NBA playoff matchup. The rules don’t change in those scenarios, but those enforcing them recognize the import of the moment and try to allow play to occur in as pure a form as possible. The backlash against VAR seems to be centered on the unnatural level of precision it adds to the game, going beyond what the players on the field can perceive. Fans watch sports to see athletes decide outcomes. And when it comes down to the imperceptible, we want things to stay a little blurry. (RJA)Baseball Explainer GIF of the Day:An overlay of Charlie Morton’s 94MPH fastball and 80MPH curveball (via Rob Friedman)For everyone who has ever asked “How could he swing at that?!” (RJA)Quick Links:How a simple rule change in soccer ended up transforming the goalkeeper position. (RJA)It’s not my least favorite cartel (looking at you Big Carseat), but this article from Maya Kosoff on how TI became Big Calculator was magnificent. (RJA)The rural Georgia county fighting for darkness. (RJA)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

Why is this interesting? - The Video Assistant Referee Edition

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is making his second appearance in WITI after previously writing about Video Assisted Review. He is a marketing director based in Atlanta, GA, and is in a competition against his coworker Graydon Gordian for who can write the most WITIs. At various points in his life he has done much more interesting things like being a professional poker player and helping lead the grassroots fan movement that brought an MLS team to Atlanta. He also writes an irregularly published newsletter called Proper Tack that touches on all these topics and more.Ryan here. When you win a contest you expect a reward. Sometimes that’s just a trophy or medal of some sort, but often there is a monetary component to the prize as well. Every player on the Super Bowl winning team receives $118,000. The Boston Marathon winner gets $150,000 in prize money. A baseball player receiving the full postseason player share, which goes to World Series champions, made an extra $382,358 last year.There’s even a basketball tournament called, simply, The Basketball Tournament, that any team can apply to enter, and culminates with a 24-team winner-take-all tournament for a $1 million prize.But this all pales in comparison to what will happen today. Today there will be a game where the winning team will get well over $200 million. Why is this interesting?Today is the Sky Bet Championship Playoff Final. What is that, you say? It’s the playoff for the 3rd and final spot to earn promotion from the now comically corporate-named English Football League Championship (“The Championship” for the rest of this WITI), or the second-highest level of professional soccer in England.Before we get too far into this, let’s discuss promotion/relegation, and the concept of a sporting pyramid. Non-Americans and those who are familiar with this, feel free to skip down a few paragraphs.The professional model for much of the world’s team athletics is known as the pyramid. Each level has its own season-long competition, and the best teams move up to the next level for the following season. In order for this to work, the worst teams also have to move down to the previous level. All of the leagues you’ve heard of are probably the “top of the pyramid” leagues like The Premier League in England, La Liga in Spain, Bundesliga in Germany, and Serie A in Italy. In England, the top-2 finishers in The Championship automatically qualify for promotion to the Premier League. Leeds United, who deserve a WITI all of their own, and West Brom have already secured those two spots. The final slot is awarded based on a 4-team playoff between the teams finishing 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th during the season. Today at 2:45PM ET is the culmination of this playoff. Fulham, a Premier League mainstay in the early 2000s and top-flight participant as recently as 2019, will face Brentford, a team that has not played a First Division game since 1947. The winner of this match will earn the third and final promotion spot into the 2020-21 Premier League, England’s top flight league and the richest league in sports. Because of how the Premier League splits TV revenues this means that a newly promoted team will have a VERY SUDDEN increase in funds. In the 2019 season, the lowest earning club in the Premier League received £96 million, or approximately $125 million, in revenue sharing from TV rights. And that’s before any tickets or merchandise were sold. Teams want to keep that revenue, so they are going to spend it on new players, better coaches, whatever they think will help them win.And the reward is not just the money received from coming up either. Because suddenly chopping £100 million ($131 million) off a team’s finances would lead to crippling debt, massive asset fire sales, and general turmoil, teams that get relegated from the Premier League also receive a cushioning payment on the order of £40 million ($52 million). This is a one-time payment rather than an annual distribution, but it can help you keep some of those new players around for a year and hopefully earn your way back up.Add this together with the increased visibility, ticket prices, and merchandise sales that come with being a Premier League team and now you have a game that is worth over $200 million to the winner.To add to the intrigue, the two clubs playing today are bitter rivals going back to the 1920s whose stadiums are separated by a 4-mile walk along the Thames in West London. So tune in to see what real pressure looks like. (RJA)Watershed Map of the Day:A map of the watersheds for all of the world’s major river systems. (RJA)Quick Links:The reason you don’t see the same kind of intrigue in other top European leagues is that, on top of lower TV revenue overall, the revenue sharing is not nearly as equal. In France, international TV rights are only split among the top-9 teams, for instance. In Spain, Barcelona and Real Madrid earn €100 million/year more than the lowest teams from TV revenue, and that’s more level than it used to be! (RJA)My late Congressman, the honorable John Lewis, wrote an op ed to be published the day of his funeral. (RJA)Isamu Yamamoto does things on a skateboard (and multiple skateboards) I didn’t know were possible. (RJA)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

Why is this interesting? - The Richest Game Edition

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is making his third appearance in WITI after previously writing about Video Assisted Review and The Richest Game. He is a marketing director based in Atlanta, GA, and is in a competition against his coworker Graydon Gordian for who can writethemostWITIs. At various points in his life, he has done much more interesting things like being a professional poker player and helping lead the grassroots fan movement that brought an MLS team to Atlanta. Recently one of those things has been GeorgiaVotes.com, which chronicled the early voting behavior across the state of Georgia including breakdowns by county which brought us here.Ryan here. For much of the US, counties—also known as parishes (Louisiana) and boroughs (Alaska)—determine where we go to school, how much we pay in sales and property taxes, who polices our neighborhoods, and even who picks up our trash. And if you’re anything like me, you likely never gave them much thought outside those basic services.After all, we are the United States of America. The concept of states was ensconced in our country’s founding. Meanwhile, humans have gathered themselves in cities for over 12,000 years, going back at least to the city of Jericho in the 10th century BCE. But a few years ago, I found myself wondering where the county, which is effectively the middle-manager of government hierarchies, came from.My attempts to answer what seemed like a simple question only led to more confusion over their purpose. Counties, as it turns out, are a positively Seussian collection of peculiarities.Why is this interesting?Sometime in the last few months you probably found yourself sitting in front of the TV watching Steve Kornacki or John King zip around a giant touchscreen, zooming in to county-level vote totals and speaking to comparisons against previous years’ voting behavior. Their ability to seemingly spout off the name of every county in every swing state engrossed the viewing public.The word county itself is derived from the Old French word conté, which described an expanse of land under the control of a Count. This makes sense etymologically, as a King controls a Kingdom and Duke controls a Duchy, while at the same time being quite confusing historically. Unless I missed a semester of US history, the total number of counts who have ever held office in America is zero.So we stole the word, but then what makes a county a county? It’s clearly not population. Kings County, also known as Brooklyn, has a population that is approximately 5,775-times the size of Hamilton County in Upstate New York. It also doesn’t appear to be based on area. After all, California and its 156,000 square miles have 58 total counties (27th most of any state) while Kentucky fits 120 into a quarter of the space.Some places don’t even really care about counties. Rhode Island is the smallest state in the country at just 37 miles wide by 48 miles long. And while the state is made up of five counties, there are no actual county governments. Each county just acts as a boundary line for the state-run sheriffs and courts. Connecticut works in a similar way.Georgia, where I live, does care about counties. So much so that there are 159 of them. That’s the second-most of any state (Texas has 254, and also about 200,000 more square miles of land area and 16 million more people). The seemingly apocryphal but amazingly true story for most of these is that Georgia used to have a rule that everyone in a county should be able to travel to the county seat and back in a single day. Given the primary mode of travel at the time (horseback), that meant counties needed to occupy a pretty small land area. As the population of the state continued expanding west, a bunch of new counties was mandated by law. The state went from eight counties in 1777, to 24 by 1800, to 65 in 1825, to 135 in 1875.Georgia, however, didn’t stop creating counties once cars and trains came along. That’s thanks to the state’s County Unit System. In the post-Reconstruction era, Georgia decided to create an electoral college of sorts, where the eight largest counties (home to most of the state’s Black residents) were each worth six unit votes, the next 30 mid-sized counties were worth four-unit votes, and the remaining 100+ counties were each worth two unit votes. The implications for what part of the state would control statewide government is clear. After this system went into effect in 1917, the state created nine more small counties, meaning 18 more unit votes for rural white voters.While this system was ruled illegal in 1963, thus creating the “one person, one vote” standard, the 159 counties remain, and no efforts to consolidate them have gained significant traction. Next time you come through Georgia have a look at the license plates. At the bottom, you’ll see listed the county that issued it. See if you can spot all 159. (RJA)_____Partner post: Brightland x WITINew year, new resolutions. And one of ours is to re-evaluate the building blocks of our kitchen. One of the best things we’ve switched to last year has been our olive oil. We’re fans of Brightland, a new consumer brand that feels soulful has a clear aesthetic vision and tastes really good. This product is designed to be front and center in your kitchen and with your cooking, a far cry from that dusty green bottle in the back of your cabinet. Brightland is grown in California on family farms, and also fits nearly every lifestyle: vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, Keto, Paleo, Atkins, and Mediterranean. We are partial to their OG products, Awake and Alive (bought as a duo, of course), but for gourmands, we’d recommend the essential capsule which includes their new champagne vinegar and balsamic vinegar. Your kitchen and cooking will thank you. Brightland offers subscriptions to all of their products, and are kindly offering WITI readers a code for $10 off the Essential Capsule or DUO: WITI10. _____County Population GIF of the Day:What better use of counties than to show the population migration and growth of the United States over the last 220 years. From Len Kiefer. (RJA)Quick Links:Counties lead to weird governance, and one great example of this is McIntosh County down in Southeast Georgia. Melissa Fay Greene takes you through the ins-and-outs of the majority-Black county electing their first Black county commissioner in the late 1970s in Praying for Sheetrock. (RJA)Umberto Eco walks through his library to find a book. (RJA)First photos of the new Oval Office (CJN)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

Why is this interesting? - The County Edition

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is making his fourth appearance in WITI after previously writing about Video Assisted Review, The Richest Game, and Counties. He is a marketing director based in Atlanta, GA, and has previously lived in Maine, Bermuda, Texas, LA, and NYC. Ryan here. I have been deaf in my right ear since I was eight years old. This was the result of a benign growth called a cholesteatoma that destroyed my eardrum and inner ear bones. In high school, I decided I wanted to be an electrical engineer so I could help make speakers and hearing aids for people with similar issues. While that only lasted 3 semesters (a co-op job quickly dissuaded me from pursuing that line of work), I did get to spend hours learning how to design integrated circuits that could end up on semiconductors.Articles have started appearing in the press recently about a semiconductor shortage, and what that may mean for the economy. “Semiconductor” is a broad term for a miniature electronic device also known as an integrated circuit. They are essentially small, purpose-built computing engines, very good at handling specific commands. There are 4 major types of semiconductors: standard chips (few tasks done well, like a checkout scanner at the grocery store), memory chips (RAM and ROM), microprocessors (CPUs, the brain in your computers), and the much more complex “system-on-a-chip” of SOCs. Within that SOC category are microcontrollers, which are like microprocessors but add their own dedicated memory and peripherals.Credit: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.The industry hardest hit by the shortage right now is automobile manufacturing. Volkswagen, Nissan, GM, and Ford have all announced significant production cuts. Ford has projected as much as a 20% drop in production this quarter due to the shortage. As a comparison, automobile industry sales only fell by an estimated 15% in 2020 as a result of the worldwide pandemic.The leading cause of this shortage is that nearly 70% of microcontroller units that end up in cars rely, at least in part, on semiconductors from a single Taiwanese company: a company so in demand that they can make car manufacturers, a multi-trillion dollar industry, wait.Why is this interesting?Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang, a former TI executive. TSMC’s big innovation was decoupling the manufacturing process from the design process. Historically, semiconductor companies like Intel, TI, and AMD designed their chips in-house and then built the manufacturing processes to produce them at scale. By being vertically integrated (owning and controlling multiple parts of the value chain), companies were able to leverage their expertise in a new market that wasn’t yet built for specialization.TSMC’s bet was that, as the market for semiconductors grew, there would be more companies who needed custom chips than could afford to build a foundry. Foundries cost billions of dollars and years to construct, making them far outside the budget of all but the largest companies. One key reason for this is the level of control and precision required. Go to the 47:45 mark of this video to see a TI foundry at work."A speck of household dust landing on one of these delicate silicon wafers would be comparable to Mount Everest landing in the streets of Manhattan"TSMC would fill that gap with what is known as a fabless foundry, or a manufacturing plant that can take another company’s designs and turn out millions of chips quickly and cheaply. By being totally focused on manufacturing expertise, TSMC and other fabless foundries can invest billions of dollars every year into R&D and manufacturing processes that the thousands of companies who rely on semiconductors can benefit from. It’s been so successful that TSMC now manufactures chips for major tech companies like Nvidia, AMD, and even Apple’s new custom A14 (mobile) and M1 (laptop) chips. Chips from those 3 companies are incredibly valuable. A top-of-the-line Nvidia graphics card costs almost $2,000 and AMD CPUs can run over $600. Apple’s costs aren’t as clear since they don’t sell the component, but those chips enable them to sell $1,000 phones and $3,000 laptops.The automobile industry operates differently. The initial buyers of the semiconductors are companies like Renesas and NXP who design the microcontrollers a car relies on. Automobile manufacturers then buy the microcontrollers from these suppliers based on factors like supply chain, performance, and price. Naturally this additional step in the chain has the effect of pushing down TSMC’s margins on these semiconductors versus selling products directly to a higher margin buyer like Nvidia or Apple. Because of this value chain, TSMC may end up charging $1 for a semiconductor that a $40,000 car relies on. As a manufacturer who has more demand than they can fill, TSMC is going to prioritize the high-value chips. Meaning these car parts, which only account for 3% of TSMC’s revenue, go to the back of the line. (RJA)__Partner Post: WITI x The BrowserWith the flood of newsletters, there’s a lot of similar looking links floating around. Enter The Browser. It is a beautiful synthesis of articles you won’t find elsewhere, which opens your brain and your references. Like what we aim to do with WITI, the Browser team are obsessed with quality first and the finest rather than the latest. So there’s no peg to trending topics, but rather high signal, good links. We highly recommend subscribing. Sign up with 20 percent off with a special WITI code by clicking here and using WITI20 at checkout. (CJN)__International Radio Station of the Day:Every green dot you see is a radio station that you can stream right within the browser. Escape your apartment with a little international flare at radio.garden(RJA)Quick Links:There is another important wrinkle to the semiconductor story and the geopolitical risks associated with so much critical manufacturing happening on a small island just off the coast of mainland China. (RJA)Related, a blast-from-the-past NYT article from 1993 titled “Turning the Desktop PC Into a Talk Radio Medium” (RJA)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Semiconductor Edition

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is joining us for his fifth WITI, having previously written about Video Assisted Review, The Richest Game, Counties, and Semiconductors. He is a marketing director based in Atlanta, GA, and has previously lived in Maine, Bermuda, Texas, LA, and NYC. Ryan here. My college years were perfectly timed with the online poker boom. In August of 2002, I started at Georgia Tech, bringing with me the strong mathematics background that would imply. Just nine months later, in May of 2003, an accountant from Tennessee named Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker main event. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be the next poker millionaire.While late-night poker games have long been a right of passage for young people, the proliferation of high-speed internet and launch of online poker rooms revolutionized the playing experience. Games of all stakes and formats were suddenly available around the clock, and players soon learned that you could “sit down” at more than one table at a time. Many of these “multi-tablers” (as people who played more than one game at a time came to be known) started using 4-color decks in an effort to reduce confusion between suits. But 4-color decks weren’t an innovation from the computer age. Far from it.Why is this interesting?Playing cards go back at least to 9th century China and quickly spread across the ancient world. Some of the details in early packs were incredible, bearing more resemblance to tarot cards than the playing cards we use today.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mamluk_kanjifah_cards.pnghttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Viscontisforzatarot.jpgOver time the concept of suits and ranks evolved, and by around the late 1400s, we had the French Suits you are likely familiar with: clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. In the early 1500s, the “English pattern” deck (52 cards, Ace through King in 4 suits, designs only on the face cards) had emerged as the favored choice, and card games were off to the races.This wasn’t the end of card design evolution though. As card games got more complex, and as more upper-class members of society were playing them, updated designs began to appear. By the early 1900s, a number of companies were creating 4-color decks marketed for bridge players. In these decks the diamonds were blue and the clubs were green—helping to clarify play in trick-taking games. If you’re not used to this, the visual can be jarring.So jarring, in fact, that some players revolt when they see them. In 1995, Mike Caro, the poker player, gambling author, and (crucially for this story) casino executive rolled out 4-color decks across 65 casinos. The experiment was poorly received.But, Mike’s dreams were unbelievably, stunningly, horribly dashed that day. Mike remembers that the managers reported a “stunned silence” at this sudden change in the color of the cards on that fateful day. The players were unsure about this unusual break with the traditional colors. Although most players seemed impressed, some were indifferent and then there were those who voiced their discontent rather loudly. There were a few who took this opportunity to blame their misfortune on the color change at their tables.But while the four-color deck never really took off for physical card games, they did see adoption in online poker. And the reason was as simple as increased earning potential.For the sake of this example, let’s consider limit hold’em poker, where there is a cap on the amount you can wager and how many times a player can raise. A good online poker player could expect to make 3 BB/100 (big bets per 100 hands). In other words, if this player was playing a $10/$20 game ($10 bet increments during the first two rounds of betting, $20 bet increments on the final two rounds) they could expect to make $60 every 100 hands, on average. Online tables are much faster than casino poker rooms, so you may be able to get in 60 hands per hour, meaning your hourly rate would work out to $36/hr. But online poker allows you to play multiple tables at once. Sitting down at 4 tables at the same time may have a negative impact on your win rate, but the volume would more than make up for it. If a player’s win rate dropped from 3 BB/100 to 2.5 BB/100 they would still see their hourly rate increase from $36 to $120.In order to maintain a relatively high win rate, players wanted to be absolutely sure of what was in their hand. And that’s where the 4-color deck came in. Players no longer had to worry about mistaking a heart for a diamond and misreading their opponents’ flush (5 cards of a single suit) possibilities, limiting the chances of making a major mistake. Today, every major online poker room offers a 4-color deck option for players. The feature has even made it all the way down to the “play with your friends on Zoom” platforms that popped up during the pandemic, such as WITI Poker Night favorite Donkhouse. (RJA)Soccer Goal of the Day:The best goal scored in international soccer over the past couple months wasn’t in the Euros or Copa America, it was by the US Womens National Team. (RJA)Quick Links:If this caught your fancy, you can buy physical decks of 4-color cards. (RJA)Calling back to my previous WITI, Intel is said to be considering acquiring GlobalFoundries for $30 billion. (RJA)On the rise of Spotify streaming farms(RJA)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The 4-Color Deck Edition

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is joining us for his sixth WITI, having previously written about everything from Video-Assisted Review to Semiconductors to The 4-Color Deck. He is a currently on-sabbatical marketing executive based in Atlanta, GA, and would love to talk to any interesting people about anything at any time. Ryan here. Having spent a lot of my high school and college life in math classes, statistics, in particular, it was a little surprising to learn that not everyone has a favorite statistical paradox. There are lots of good ones to choose from, including the Friendship Paradox (most people have fewer friends than their friends do, on average) and the Will Rogers Phenomenon (familiarized by the comedian’s apocryphal quote on Oklahoma migrants, and more accurately described as moving one item from set A to set B causing both sets’ average to increase).While both of those are nice, Simpson’s Paradox wins my admiration as my favorite statistical paradox. It’s simple to describe, yet it still stops me in my tracks when I see it in the wild. The paradox is that a measurable effect on a large population disappears, or even reverses when that population is split into subgroups. The cause of these results is almost always a material change in the denominators from one period to the next. Showing is easier than telling with paradoxes, so here is a classic example: In 1995 and 1996, David Justice had a higher batting average than Derek Jeter in each year. However, Jeter had a higher cumulative batting average over those two years. How does this work? Jeter’s 1996 stats accounted for over 92% of his total performance over the two years, as he was 20 years old and only called up to the major league for a few games in 1995. Meanwhile, Justice’s 1996 stats were only 25% of his total performance due to a separated shoulder he suffered barely two months into the season. So while Justice performed better on smaller sample size, Jeter’s 183 hits in 1996 were the strongest signal for overall performance.Why is this interesting?We’ve all heard the quote made famous by Mark Twain, but whose provenance is unknown, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Statistical paradoxes are at the heart of this. Even experts who can explain how and why they happen will feel a tinge of discomfort when one rears its head.And there are a number of critically important measures that can fall prey to a paradox. For instance, imagine the average income for every working-age population goes up, but at the same time, overall average income falls as more Millenials move into their mid-career earnings peaks while Baby Boomers retire. Is that good or bad for the economy?Or, especially poignant at this moment, what if Simpson’s Paradox confuses messaging around COVID vaccine efficacy?You may remember some viral news stories about a month ago stating that COVID vaccines were proving to be less than 70% effective in Israel. But given what you learned so far, would it surprise you to learn that this same data also showed the vaccines were over 85% effective for people over 50, and nearly 92% effective for people under 50 years old?Of course it would! Paradoxes are weird and wild things. I’ve recalculated the math above a half-dozen times, still worried that I’m missing something. What’s happening here is that older people are much more likely to suffer severe cases of COVID than their younger counterparts, whether vaccinated (.290% vs .011%) and unvaccinated (.171% vs .043%). And because nearly 92% of people over 50 in the data set were vaccinated while only 76% of those under 50 were, the fully vaccinated number has a much higher representation of older people. In other words, high-risk patients make up 37.8% of the vaccinated group and only 14.3% of the unvaccinated group. Because we’ve moved a much larger percentage of high-risk patients into the vaccinated group, it skews the aggregate numbers away from each sub-group’s performance.This is why scientific vaccine trials work so hard to ensure the test and control groups are representative of the overall population. And why I think it’s so important to understand how statistics work. Not just in the sense of how you can calculate some numbers in a spreadsheet, but being able to really get down to the impact of a policy, product, or message. (RJA)Chart of the Day:People are quitting their jobs at a record rate. Myself included. Go find something you love doing! (RJA)Quick Links:Base Rates are at the heart of many statistical paradoxes and are a worthy topic of exploration on their own. (RJA)The Washington Post recently put out an amazing profile of Christopher Lloyd. (RJA)The man trying to stop $45 billion of organized theft from CVS. (RJA)__WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.The delicious Thai food you ordered is part of a bigger economic story. App happy eaters are part of a growing global market for food delivery—which interestingly now registers at $150 billion, more than triple its 2017 value. See how your small order fits into the bigger picture with a new article on the trends and opportunities in this fast-growing market.__Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Simpson's Paradox Edition

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is a freelance marketing exec based in Atlanta, GA. He has written a number of previous WITIs including Video Assisted Review, Semiconductors, and Simpson’s Paradox. An earlier version of this edition first appeared on his Proper Tack newsletter.Ryan here. Batteries are everywhere. They’re in whatever you are using to read this email right now. Lithium-ion batteries were first commercialized 30 years ago by Sony, in partnership with the Japanese chemical company Asahi Kasei, and have become a defining part of our lives. In recent years batteries have famously made the leap from our personal electronics to our cars.  If you don’t yet have an EV, you probably will soon, as the industry continues to shift away from internal combustion.  Car companies have even started dramatically increasing their marketing budget to help ensure consumers follow their lead.But all is not well in lithium-ion land. Prices for lithium carbonate in China, the world’s largest EV market, quadrupled over the course of 2021 to $36,514 per ton. Ford’s CEO is more worried about battery supply than semiconductors. And if you read the past WITI on semiconductors you would know how big of a deal that is! The demand for lithium-ion batteries expands far beyond consumer products. These could be batteries in your home to retain excess power generated by rooftop solar panels, or grid-scale batteries for the same general purpose on a larger scale. This is important as solar and wind power are projected to account for over 60% of new power generation coming online this year in the US.Why is this interesting?Right now we largely think of energy storage as a chemical process. You’ve got the alkaline batteries that go into remote controls and bedevil parents every Christmas morning. You’ve got the lead-acid batteries that internal combustion engines use to power their starters. You’ve got lithium-ion batteries and dozens more. Thankfully, there are a number of new energy storage solutions in the works that may help us more fully rely on clean energy generation.One of the more intriguing—and at first counterintuitive—examples is what I’ll call mechanical storage.Parts of the world have actually used this for a long time through what’s known as pumped storage. Basically, you use excess energy to pump water up a hill into a reservoir. Then, when you need power, you let the water run down and spin a turbine. The Bath County Pumped Storage Station in Virginia can store about 24 gigawatt-hours of energy this way. To put that in context, the island of Oahu has a peak load of about 1.2 gigawatts, so a full BCPSS could power the entire island at peak load for 20 hours.The problem with pumped storage is that it needs a hill and two reservoirs (a lower that typically holds the water, and an upper that you pump the water up to). You can build a hill and some reservoirs, but that costs a lot of money. Typically these are installed where the terrain already allows for it. So mountains. You also need water. And in areas like the quickly-drying American West, that can be problematic.The good news is that you can lift much more than water. Energy Vault is beautiful in it’s simplicity. It works like pumping water uphill, only instead it lifts 35-ton concrete blocks. When you need energy you start lowering a block, which spins a turbine, which generates electricity.If lifting something up isn’t your thing, you can also push stuff down. Hydrostor is trying to solve energy storage by pumping compressed air into the ground and then releasing it when energy is needed. As the air comes up it spins a turbine, which generates electricity. You see the pattern.Beyond these mechanical storage solutions, there are also some interesting chemical alternatives including iron air batteries and green hydrogen. While these storage formats aren’t going to make it into your car any time soon, it does start to expand the idea of batteries. And with increasing home usage it starts to open up new size and weight possibilities that weren’t possible when batteries needed to fit in pockets. Given the realities of lithium (we may have 90 million tons left), the race is on to find new ways to store energy and power our world. (RJA)__Partner post: The Daily UpsideIf you love what we write every day, you likely value intriguing and thought-provoking stories. The Daily Upside, founded by a team of bankers and journalists, is WITI but for business news. Built with investors in mind, The Daily Upside is packed with analysis and stories you simply won’t find elsewhere. We like it as it strikes that elusive balance of gravitas and wit.There’s a reason 250,000 readers start their day with The Daily Upside. Join today for free.--WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Sporting Goods 2022: What do sneakers have in common with Coco Chanel? According to the founder of a running-shoes company, in the past two years the global industry has seen a major shift, “comparable to the 1920s when [Chanel] liberated women from corsets.” A new report, from the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry and McKinsey, reviews the market and dives deeper on five trends that could reshape it.—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Battery Edition

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is a freelance marketing exec based in Atlanta, GA. He has written a whole bunch of WITIs, including Video Assisted Review, Semiconductors, Simpson’s Paradox, and Batteries.Ryan here. Many years ago, I would get breakfast every Monday with some very smart professors and grad students at Georgia Tech. Hydrogen fuel cells (HFCs) were a very popular concept at the time, particularly as a potential powertrain replacement for internal combustion engines. The idea was simple: convert water to hydrogen via electrolysis and store that hydrogen, in various forms, to power cars and other things.The problem was that it takes more energy to “charge” an HFC, or any battery for that matter, than it can send back into a system. Those pesky laws of thermodynamics strike again.This is even more problematic for HFCs because electrolysis, the method for turning water into hydrogen, requires a lot of energy. With power generation dominated by coal and natural gas, the end result was that you were actually producing as much or more CO2 with HFCs than if you just used gasoline.What has changed over the years is our ability to produce more clean energy than we can actually use. Residential solar panels are pushing 20% efficiency and some prototypes are approaching 50%. Turbines have grown larger, allowing them to capture more wind and produce more energy. When you add these per-unit improvements to the increasing amounts of solar and wind generation being deployed, you start to see things that would have been inconceivable even 5 years ago.Why is this interesting?On April 30th, California actually had to reduce solar energy production by 2,900 MW (slightly more than the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant capacity) to keep from overloading the grid. 99.87% of all power demand was being met by clean, renewable energy and there was still more to go around. While some of the battery types I discussed in my last WITI can work to store day-time energy for night-time usage, hydrogen offers even more possibilities.For one, hydrogen storage can hold months’ worth of energy. While other batteries can sustain individual houses or even towns for 24-48 hours of crisis, with hydrogen you can build a huge reserve during the windy season, or the sunny season, and rely on it for months.Image via FTAdditionally, hydrogen can be integrated into existing natural gas plants. Turbine manufacturers have been developing new options that will accept and burn hydrogen gas, extending the life of these plants and infrastructure while also reducing their greenhouse gas emissions related to fuel combustion to zero.And finally, hydrogen can be easily transported. Not in its gas form, but once hydrogen has been converted into ammonia it can be transported via pipelines, including existing natural gas pipelines. That means we can make zero-emission fuel available across states, countries, and continents.There are about 650MW of hydrogen production capacity coming online in 2022, and Shell recently announced that they are building a 200MW production plant powered entirely by wind off the coast of the Netherlands. If these projects all prove out, and the cost of renewable energy deployment continues to drop, we may have one of our best weapons yet against pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. (RJA)—WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.On trade, vaccines, and sustainable and inclusive growth. From the ways the pandemic affected global trade to vaccine access in emerging economies and what an equitable recovery might look like, this lively conversation with the World Trade Organization’s first African—and first female—director-general covers a lot of ground. Check it out.—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Green Hydrogen Edition

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is a freelance marketing exec based in Atlanta, GA. He has written a whole bunch of WITIs, including Video Assisted Review, Semiconductors, Simpson’s Paradox, and Batteries.Ryan here. At their best, sports are the peak of human capabilities. People have been watching athletes entertain us for millennia, and today a Sunday night NFL Football game gets nearly double the viewers of the most popular scripted television show in the United States.Why is this interesting? is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.One of the reasons the NFL got so popular is that they were the first to really invest in the television experience. And for them, that included sound. In a 2012 Atlantic article, Rich Cohen explains how the family behind NFL Films taught the country how to watch football. This quote sums up the immersive experience of their approach:“They were getting angles you had never seen. On TV, you’d always see the shot from the main camera, which sits high above the stadium—never any handhelds. And here was this little company doing slow motion, doing sound. They were on the field. I remember saying ‘Boy, that really makes you feel like you’re part of the game.’ ”Sound is enveloping. While we can shut our eyes, we can’t close our ears.Among the many ways sound can influence your experience with sports are the on-field action (engine noise at races, squeaking sneakers in basketball, the crack of a bat in baseball), the fan experience (in-stadium announcers, a roaring crowd, and even vuvuzelas), and live commentary when you are watching from home.Why is this interesting?For today’s WITI, I wanted to share some of the wonders of sports sounds with you. Click the link or the image to go to the videos, and make sure you have your speakers on.Over the years the different engines used in F1 have led to a variety of sounds and people are religious in their devotion to one over the others. The V10 sounds like Michael Schumacher winning 5 championships in a row for Ferrari.Golf is a sport best known for its silence. Even the rare camera shutter can cause a golfer to back away from a shot, to say nothing of crowd noise from an adjacent hole. But there’s one hole on one course that’s different. The 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale is a short par 3 surrounded by 20,000 fans ready to go wild for a great shot, and boo you if you miss the green.I love the differences in sports sounds across cultures as well. In America, we boo, but lots of other sporting cultures add a “lovely” whistle to show their displeasure. Similarly, the crowd roars in the United States tend to be a high octave, near-squeal of excitement. Take this example of Atlanta Brave Eddie Rosario hitting a home run in game 3 of the NLCS last yearIt’s a deafening roar from the start, and you can hear the crowd go up another octave when the ball lands over the outfield wall.Latin American soccer, on the other hand, is full of low octave roars from the crowd, often coming on shots that just missed. This is hard to find a great video of so I’d encourage you to watch more games, and instead enjoy a toned down version of that reaction in this clip that also features the classic announcer GOOOOOOOOOOL.On the subject of announcers, Vin Scully, the legendary voice of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers passed away on Tuesday at the age of 94. Scully is the measuring stick for broadcasters, a man who knew how to keep you the right amount of informed and entertained. Over his 66 year career he called some of the most well known moments in baseball history including:Kirk Gibson’s pinch hit home run in the World SeriesHank Aaron breaking the record for career home runsThe Bill Buckner errorThese clips are long. Longer than you’ve probably seen before since they get turned into 15 second clips. But they’re worth watching in full to understand everything Scully was able to offer.And once you’ve seen those, make sure you watch him spend a whole at bat telling the story of 12 year old Jonny Gomes getting attacked by a wolf. His storytelling, mixed with an occasional update of the status of the at bat, are just masterful.And finally, a champion competitor who just can’t stop yapping while performing at the top of her game. (RJA)Quick Links:Three Models Of Creativity from Steven Johnson (NRB)The political science of shark attacks (NRB)Should You Take the Annuity or the Lump Sum If You Win the Lottery? (This caused quite a debate on WITI contributor’s Slack, so be warned that not everyone agrees with the logic here.) (NRB)—WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.How can individuals use their influence for positive change? A new report explores how highly resourced individuals can use many different forms of engagement to work toward systemic change. Take the journey to create a more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous world. You don't want to miss it.Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).Why is this interesting? is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Sounds of Sports Edition

Ryan Anderson (RJA) is a freelance marketing exec based in Atlanta, GA. He’s written WITIs about counties, statistical paradoxes, green hydrogen, sound in sports, and more. He’s never lived in Macon, but really thinks you should visit. Ryan here. Nestled just outside the geographical center of Georgia, Macon is a city of 150,000 people along the Ocmulgee River. For over 17,000 years people have called this little stretch of Southeast home, and that’s not something you can say about many places in North America.But Macon has seen some tough times. From 1970 to 2010 the city’s population dropped by 30,000, major employers were fleeing for bigger and better connected cities, and airlines were pulling routes out of the regional airport. All of the factors were there for a prolonged decline.Thankfully, over the last decade or two a growing number of proud Maconites, both native and transplants, have been investing in the city and helping turn it into a place worth seeing.But the fact of the matter is you can’t talk about Macon without talking about music. Nearly 50 years past the peak of its influence, it’s easy to forget how important Macon was to the success of Black artists, and the creation of Southern Rock. Macon keeps better company than you realize (shirt via BS)Macon is the birthplace of Little Richard and where Otis Redding came of age. Otis’s success, both during his too-short life and posthumously, helped fund the creation of Capricorn Records. If your knowledge of Capricorn Records only extends to when the resurrected version of the label was pumping out gold records for 311 and Cake in the 1990s then boy do I have some news for you.In the late 60s, Phil and Alan Walden saw the opportunity to expand beyond managing Black artists like Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, and Al Green. There was a growing breed of rock coming out of the South, and they leaned hard into it, discovering or creating acts like The Charlie Daniels Band, The Allman Brothers Band, and The Marshall Tucker Band.With millions of records sold, their influence went far beyond just music. There’s an argument to be made that Capricorn Records, and The Allman Brothers Band in particular, put Jimmy Carter in the White House. Now, I’m not making that argument, but Jimmy Carter did.Also, if you spent time around Macon you knew there were 2 rules for talking to Gregg Allman. “Don’t ask about Duane. Don’t ask about Cher.”In more recent years, it’s where Mike Mills and Bill Berry met to begin forming what became R.E.M., and where Jason Aldean rose to country stardom.So it should come as no surprise that there are great music festivals in this city. Chief among them being Bragg Jam, featuring what are honestly some of the best bookers in the country. Despite being a small festival with a limited budget it can feature one of Jason Isbell’s first shows after he restarted his career as a solo artist, and where you could see Rainbow Kitten Surprise in a 200 person space, 2 years before they got BIG LETTER BILLING at major festivals like Austin City Limits and Bonnaroo.What To Do In MaconWalk AroundMacon’s downtown was designed with wide, expansive boulevards surrounding large city blocks bisected by active alleys. These alleys have evolved from simple pass-throughs into art installations, restaurant space, and other kinds of transformative interior development that deserve your time.Stay AtHotel Forty Five, a newly opened boutique hotel in the heart of downtown Macon. If you’re more of a bed-and-breakfast person, check out The Burke Mansion or 1842 Inn.Eat AtThe Rookery. Originally opened in 1976, The Rookery was purchased in 2009 and has truly led the revitalization of downtown Macon. No reservations here, but there’s a record store just a couple steps away to entertain you after you put your name on the list.Drink AtThe Monkey’s Paw Tiki Lounge. Only open 5pm-11pm, Thursday through Saturday, The Monkey’s Paw is a small space tucked away over Downtown Grill, the kind of steakhouse where most people smoke cigars with dinner. But step in and you’re immediately transported to a South Pacific paradise of rum drinks. No Barcardi in sight.You’ll need to make a reservation and you only get to hang out for an hour at a time, but it’s worth making a point to go here.Listen to Music AtGrants Lounge, while decidedly less sticky now that it has been taken over and revived by The Moonhangar Group (of The Rookery recommendation above), maintains its wonderful dive atmosphere while hosting some of the best up and coming acts in the region.Get Outside AtOcmulgee Mounds National Historical Park. American Indians called this area home for thousands of years before being forcibly removed in the 1830s. 100 years later, and despite designation as a national monument in 1936, the US Government sanctioned the largest archaeological dig in American history on this site. The dig unearthed over 2.5 million artifacts but devastated the surrounding land and removed an untold number of buried Muscogee remains.Thankfully, many important parts of their history remain, including some of the most spectacular Mississipian era platform mounds in the region. At the same time, the local government has been working directly with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation to address what happened in the area, honor the history of the site, and hopefully get the region sanctioned as the first National Park and Preserve in Georgia. Learn AtThe Tubman Museum. Founded by a local reverend in 1981, the Tubman Museum has grown from one modest building to almost 50,000 square feet of exhibits, making it the Southeast's largest museum dedicated to the Art, History and Culture of African Americans. (RJA)—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RJA)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.