Changes in American eating habits from 1980 to 2009

I'm learning the statistical programming language R at the moment. My goal is develop a second career for myself as a statistician for medical studies. In any case one of the practice data sets I've been working with documents the changes in American eating habits since 1980. The data comes from the 2009 Statistical Abstract of the United States.

What will the Timberwolves look like in 2012

The 2011 NBA Season is passed. Dirk Nowitzki, Tyson Chandler, Jason Kidd, and the Mavericks proved they were the Big 3 and the Dallas Mavericks took home the championship in 2011. The 2012 season is delayed and like all NBA fans I'm eagerly awaiting tipoffs and poster jams, although I also side with what the players are doing. I'd much rather see them getting the money than the Scrooge Mcduck owners. The delay is especially disappointing because the Timberwolves look to be a much different team this year adding Ricky Rubio, Derrick Williams and head coach Rick Adelman. As I don't have anything but speculation to add on when the lockout will end I wanted to look back and ahead and take a look at last year and consider; Was Rambis a bad head coach? How was he bad and how will Rick Adelman be different? Will the 2012 Timberwolves be much better?

Kurt Rambis inherited a very young team constructed by David Kahn. Here are histograms showing the break down of Minnestoa Timberwolves' players Defensive Rating(Left) Offensive Rating(Right) .

Offensive and Defensive Ratings are closely related to points per possession and track how well players generate offense and play defense.

Interestingly the Minnesota Timberwolves team average Defensive Rating was 111 and team Offensive rating was around 106(marked with a X on the chart). Defensively the Timberwolves team defense allowed the rating of the majority of their players. Offensively the wolves scored at a level that only could have been obtained being carried by a minority of the players. This makes sense because when you're on offense your team decides who to go to and shoot the ball, while on defense you don't have this luxury. The other team is going to go to where you are weak(if they are any good). So the question came to me could Kurt Rambis ever have fielded a team with 5 good defenders?

Looking at http://www.basketball-reference.com/ the answer is no. The Wolves had only 4 players at any given time that posted above average defensive ratings(Darko Milicic, Kevin Love, Corey Brewer, Kosta Koufos) early in the year and Brewer and Koufos were swapped for Anthony Randolph late in the year. So at point guard, small forward and often shooting guard no matter what Kurt Rambis did he'd always be putting a defense with holes on the floor. Often he'd play Corey Brewer at shooting guard to try and compensate but I believe this was a mistake. Why? While I have yet to crunch all the data I have a working idea(based on preliminary data) that it takes 5 to defend and if you can't put out 5 above average defenders on the floor its better to just go with the best offensive player, which brings me to my second point.

I analyzed data from basketball-reference.com to answer the question: What was most likely to get you the most playing time for the Timberwolves under the Rambis and David Kahn regime? I looked at 9 different stats

• Offensive Rating(ORtg)
• Defensive Rating(DRtg)
• Salary(Sal)
• Effective Field Goal Percentage(eFG)
• Total Rebounds(TRB))
• Assists(AST)
• Steals(STL)
• Blocks(BLK)
• Turnovers(TOV)

I did some fancy stat stuff in R that you can mostly ignore while still understanding the conclusions of the analysis. Basically I found which of these stats mattered in a model where A+B = Minutes Played and A and B were these 9 factors. Ignore everything but the stats with '*'

What most influences minutes played and how(Table 1)

Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)

(Intercept) -15894.01 48224.03 -0.330 0.7514

ORtg -18.94 42.75 -0.443 0.6712

DRtg 141.99 415.42 0.342 0.7425

Sal 353.80 140.70 2.515 0.0401 *

eFG. 3494.34 5139.56 0.680 0.5184

TRB. 94.35 169.76 0.556 0.5957

AST. 41.65 34.62 1.203 0.2680

STL. 348.58 890.94 0.391 0.7073

BLK. 67.10 264.96 0.253 0.8073

TOV. -95.24 72.43 -1.315 0.2299

ANOVA-Is the table 1 model reliable? (Table 2)

Response: MP

Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)

ORtg 1 3276048 3276048 9.5740 0.01746 *

DRtg 1 223150 223150 0.6521 0.44592

Sal 1 3144386 3144386 9.1892 0.01908 *

eFG. 1 482732 482732 1.4107 0.27367

TRB. 1 4168 4168 0.0122 0.91521

AST. 1 91002 91002 0.2659 0.62195

STL. 1 1033 1033 0.0030 0.95773

BLK. 1 24972 24972 0.0730 0.79484

TOV. 1 591711 591711 1.7292 0.22995

Residuals 7 2395275 342182

Ok, good did you ignore everything but the stats with '*' ? If you didn't let me summarize the tables. The first one says that only one of the 9 factors was likely to get you playing time : Salary. So what that means is that the amount minutes a player played on the Minnesota Timberwolves was mostly influenced by the salary he signed on his contract. This means that the problem with the lineup was either

• A. Kurt Rambis was unable to bench highly paid players that performed badly
• B. Kurt Rambis believed the highly paid players played well

All this goes back to a point I'd like to make, setting players salaries(and relative status on the team) is probably more important than having the best coach. Who set the salaries for the Minnesota Timberwolves? Mostly David Kahn but it wasn't all his doing, as many of the contracts were inherited or are set by the rule of the league(like rookie contracts). Kurt Rambis it seems did not have the power to overcome the status of the players that was pre-set. But if you're reading this and think Kurt Rambis has been vindicated as a head coach, you're only partially right. Take a look at the second table. There's a little * next to ORTG which means that it's likely that Offensive Rating in the first table is likely to be an accurate result. Here's where Kurt Rambis vindication goes away: the model says that the higher the offensive rating the LESS likely you were to get minutes on the Timberwolves. Here's my thoughts on why this is.

Rambis came from the Lakers where he was in charge of defense. When he came to the Wolves he had the sense that 'defense' wins(and it can) although in the Wolves case it was impossible to put an above average defense on the floor with the Timberwolves players in 2011. So in the end Rambis appears to be bad at coaching an offense. This was disguised while he was assistant coach with the Lakers because I suspect he had little say on offensive matters. Is Rambis a good defensive coach? Quite possibly, but it's hard to tell with the Timberwolves players. Rambis was fired and the Timberwolves hired veteran coach Rick Adelman.

Rick Adelman comes to the Timberwolves from the Houston Rockets where he led them to a .500 or over records in all his seasons. I asked the same questions about Rick Adelman that I did of Kurt Rambis. What were significant factors in getting you minutes on the Houston Rockets in 2011? Below are the models.Again players are evaluated on

• Offensive Rating(ORtg)
• Defensive Rating(DRtg)
• Salary(Sal)
• Effective Field Goal Percentage(eFG)
• Total Rebounds(TRB))
• Assists(AST)
• Steals(STL)
• Blocks(BLK)
• Turnovers(TOV)

Ignore everything but the stats with '*'

What most influences minutes played and how (Table 3)

Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)

(Intercept) 28542.291 34190.417 0.835 0.423

eFG. 2681.085 7133.429 0.376 0.715

TRB. -102.565 120.497 -0.851 0.415

AST. 17.138 39.575 0.433 0.674

STL. -534.994 670.391 -0.798 0.443

BLK. -227.702 256.435 -0.888 0.395

TOV. -77.963 78.400 -0.994 0.343

ORtg 8.044 46.585 0.173 0.866

DRtg -249.472 294.233 -0.848 0.416

SAL 146.081 76.973 1.898 0.087 *

---

Multiple R-squared: 0.6227, Adjusted R-squared: 0.2832

ANOVA(Table 4)

Response: MP

Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)

eFG. 1 3754126 3754126 5.8502 0.03614 *

TRB. 1 1079287 1079287 1.6819 0.22380

AST. 1 75663 75663 0.1179 0.73842

STL. 1 52118 52118 0.0812 0.78147

BLK. 1 2528 2528 0.0039 0.95119

TOV. 1 2188235 2188235 3.4100 0.09457 *

ORtg 1 247285 247285 0.3854 0.54864

DRtg 1 881875 881875 1.3743 0.26825

SAL 1 2311247 2311247 3.6017 0.08693 *

Residuals 10 6417089 641709

Remember, Ignore everything but the stats with a '*' . Ok, so again in table 1 we find that Salary was a significant factor for getting mintues. Although on the Houston Rockets in 2011 Rick Adelman appears a little less likely than Rambis to be bound by salary(.08 vs .04). Moving on to the second table we find some differences of coaching style. Both Effective field goal percentage(eFG) and turnovers were significant factors along with salary in determining playing time. Basically Rick Adelman is more likely to play players with a high shooting percentage and bench players who turn the ball over. So who is likely to benefit from this change of coaching style and whose minutes are most likely to change under Rick Adelman?

The table below ranks the Wolves players according to Adelmans style(based on eFG and low turnovers) and Rambis based on who gets paid the most or is most trumped up by his General Manager(Wes Johnson)

My prediction is the hiring of Rick Adelman bodes well for Martell Webster and Derrick Williams and creates a problem about playing time between Michael Beasley and Derrick Williams. In fact I suspect that a BIG part of the reason Adelman signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves for 2012-2016 seasons was that Houston was really high on Derrick Williams. If you do a search for college players that posted the best NCAA effective field goal percentage with win shares over 8 in the last 10 years here are the top 12 names on the list :

1 Kevin Love

2 Andrew Bogut

3 Kenneth Faried

4 Paul Millsap

5 Michael Beasley

6 Stephen Curry

7 Emeka Okafor

8 Blake Griffin

9 Hasheem Thabeet

10 Nick Collison

11 Nick Fazekas

12 Derrick Williams

Why did Adelman come to the Timberwolves? The 2012 Timberwovles have 3 of the top 12 players for Adelmans favorite player attribute. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Rick Adelman starts a lineup of Ricky Rubio at point guard, Martell Webster at shooting guard, Michael Beasley at small forward, Derrick Williams at Power Forward, and Kevin Love at Center. What do you think the 2012 Minnesota Timberwolves lineup will be?

NBA lockout thoughts: Stern and Fisher analysis

I follow the news from the NBA lockout once in while and caught two interesting statement's from both the leaders of the players and owners David Stern and Derek Fisher.

 Worried anyone?

 

"It was a very engaging meeting," said union president Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers. "We didn't waste a lot of time at all. ... We, kind of as a group, agreed to really continue just focusing on getting the deal done and really try to stay away from the semantics and the verbal jabs, the back-and-forth, and really try to remain focused on the deal points." NBA.com

We know what we're holding and we know what you're holding.

Neither side would commit Wednesday to a deadline for getting a deal this time that would preserve the entire 2011-12 schedule. Working up to or soon after Labor Day would seem to be vital -- but no one said that, either. "There is clearly enough time," Stern said. "We don't have any deadlines in mind. We just have meetings in mind and discussions in mind." Said Fisher: "We have not tried to set a ... particular date and increase the urgency that's already there. I don't think either side feels that that's needed. There's enough pressure as there is." What's a realistic turnaround time from handshake agreement on a new CBA to NBA basketball in one form or another? "Guys are continuing to work out and train, and prepare themselves for the season to start at any time," Fisher said. "Players are physically and mentally prepared to handle [any] circumstances." NBA.com

In the first statement Derek Fisher uses the qualifier "kind of" when describing the players and owners as a group. This tells me that the group is fractured. I think it means the players have agreed to focus on getting a deal done(the owners haven't). The owners are willing to wait it out. Put another way, the median NBA owner(15 out 30) is willing to wait longer than the median NBA player. Looking at the second statement Derek Fisher uses an extended contraction "We have not" when talking about whether they have set a deadline for getting a deal done. This tells me that the players have discussed a date where they'll accept a lower offer(while of course they haven't discussed this with owners).

My prediction is the NBA season will start after a few months of lockout with players taking a bad deal because most of them aren't prepared to go a whole season without basketball. Right now the players should think about sending Derek Fisher to acting class because to anyone observant enough Fisher is giving away their position. Right now I feel the NBA owners win this fight.

This could change if the players Union was to focus and pool it's savings  to ensure that it maintains a majority of the players committed to going a whole year without basketball and aggressively pursuing contracts in other leagues(and also making sure Derek Fisher rehearses his public statements).

World According to Americans

Oldie but goodie.

Defending Taubes against a Skeptic

There was a story on NPR's The Story last week about Bernadette Lacy, a woman from Washington D.C. working forty plus hour weeks creating stress and ill health for her body(this was before the recession). Feeling stressed and unhealthy her doctor tells her to cut her hours which she does. This has the side effect of decreasing her bank account. And, when she tries to get back into the workforce she's not the same vibrant employee she was before. What else could her doctor have recommended? Here's a similar situation where I'll try to describe a better option.

I read a poorly conceived review of Gary Taubes Why We Get Fat in the June 2011 Skeptic magazine by Harriet Hall, M.D. A few thought experiments and the database I'm working on containing the math of the calorie and insulin relationship show Gary's book to be on the right track and her to be using an odd map of the world.

One notion Harriet Hall expressed was that some people are predisposed to being overweight because they store calories more efficiently than the rest of the population. Looking at the statistics from my database (Link1, link2 ) and an understanding of insulin explains why Gary's on the right track and Harriet Hall has embraced a bad scientific idea. 

            Gary Taubes argues that the reason that Americans are overweight is because we overstimulate insulin release eating carbohydrate . We eat too much carbohydrate because in the 1950's researcher Ancel Keys from the the University of Minnesota argued that the reason that we get fat is that we had too much saturated fat and cholesterol in our diets and since then this idea idea has ruled nutrition science, despite evidence to the contrary. 

            Getting back to Harriet Hall's review if I for example am efficient at storing calories then I don't need many calories to conduct my daily life like running with my Jack Russell Terrier Kirby and writing blog posts and poker articles. Carrying an efficient fat storage idea out to conclusion means that people who have this capability shouldn't need many fat cells in total to meet their energy costs or fat storage needs, so instead of getting fat, someone who “stores fat efficiently” should be thin. Carbohydrate foods that Taubes talks about like rice, corn and wheat stimulate the highest percentage of insulin of any food, and contain the least amount of energy according to my database.

           My hypothesis, slightly modified from Taubes, is based on the data and is that people who are fat have cells that extract very few calories from the food they eat(for starters by eating too many carbs) and also have the same expenses(or greater) than the average person and this also comes along with a larger insulin release. The expenses are organs,gut, brain, muscles, etc. They require energy to run. If, as I hypothesize, they earn very few calories per cell from food but have the same expenses as an average weight person they need more cells to cover the same costs(they inflate). Eating a carb heavy diet increases the frequency of the number of cells you need because carbohydrate foods in comparison to foods like meat gives your body a low return in comparison to its visual size(and a human gut is only so big). The effect experienced by the majority of people who are overweight is a low energy return on every cell and their fat storage too has a low amount of energy given their size. So they need larger populations of all types of cells(fat included) to maintain the same energy level. Imagine a similar situation which is currently being experienced by most American workers is that they need to work more hours to cover the same costs as they did years before. The same thing happens in a body consuming too many carbs.

            Getting back to bad doctors advice, what happens when you tell someone with a lower wage to cut time from work? They don't produce enough to cover their costs creating debt. What would happen (hypothetically) to someone who earns a low amount of energy per cell if you put them on a low calorie diet? They would feel an immense hunger very frequently. When they got back on a normal diet they would have to eat in even higher volume to payback the debt.

            What is the solution? You need to come up with a system of selection, specific to the person and environment that selects for efficiency relative to resources. Hmm, if only there was someone out there who came up with such a system?

*cough* Art DeVany *cough* Doug McGuff, and all the other great Paleo writers and thinkers out there.

Do you want to place the body in your care under stress? If it's already the situation cutting calories is not the answer, but neither is continuing the status-quo.

Is the LA times article about the sale of full tilt true?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-online-poker-20110701,0,6054543.story

The LA times reports that Full Tilt has been sold to european investors which could lead to to a payback of US player funds. Also reported is the news that poker pro Phil Ivey will be dropping his lawsuit as he believes the company is taking the right steps to payback players. Many in the poker community are wondering is the article true?

The author of the story is the same author that wrote the article about poker player Chris Fargis joining a Wall Street Firm. It seems likely that he would have been contacted with this information due to this prior article.

The first portion of  Full Tilt to be sold to European investors is vague. But, this is because the source of information, full tilt's attorney's, wish to remain anonymous. The later portion of the article quotes Phil Ivey's attorney and I find no signs of deception.

The early article vagueness is consistent with Full Tilt's attorney source and the later portion contains no signs of deception. My read is that Phil Ivey is withdrawing his suit making me extremely confident that he thinks Full Tilt is going to pay the players back. I  trust the article because I would always trust a read that Phil Ivey makes.

Innumeracy and Insulin

      Innumeracy is the inability to deal with a way of representing numbers. For instance doctors often come to different conclusions when test results are presented to them as percents or natural frequencies(like 1 out of 2 versus saying 50%). However in my case presenting  myself with the natural frequency proved to block my reasoning while changing to percentages made ideas clearer.

       Gary Taubes in his excellent book Good Calories, Bad Calories argued that the reason that Americans are overweight is because we release insulin throughout our body, and sometimes this release is overstimulated. The reason it is overstimulated, Taubes argues, is that we eat too much carbohydrate in our diet. We eat too much carbohydrate because in the 1950's researcher Ancel Keys from the the University of Minnesota argued that the reason that we get fat is that we had too much saturated fat and cholesterol in our diets and since then this idea idea has ruled nutrition science, despite evidence to the contrary. Taubes went to the University of Minnesota to follow up on a study which was supposedly being conducted only to be told that it was discontinued because “they didn't like the results they were getting.”

          I'm at my local supermarket buying beef when for some unknown reason I start converting the energy insulin ratio of corn based foods into percentages. I buy the 80/20 and rush home to toss it in the freezer. I head to my computer to pull out the Glycemic Load database I made and start converting the corn based products to what I call Insulin %. 

	Energy insulin ratio 1calorie to GL/g of	Insulin %
Cornflakes (Kellogg's, MI, USA)	3.28	23.00%
CornflakesTM (Kellogg's Inc., Canada)	4.95	17.00%
Corn ChexTM (Nabisco Brands Ltd., Canada)9	5.24	16.00%
50 g portion (dextrose)5	3.89	20.00%
Cornflakes, high-fiber (Presidents Choice,	6.33	14.00%
Corn BranTM (Quaker Oats Co. of Canada,	7.02	12.00%
Taco shells, cornmeal-based, baked (Old El Paso	8.88	10.00%
Corn chips, NachipsTM	11.62	8.00%
Average percentage		15.00%

Range of percentage 8%-23%

Walking through the store the beef I find typically ranges from 93/7 to 80/20. The fat % of the animals and the insulin % of the foods are strikingly similar and the minimum and maximum ranges are very close. Too much so to not investigate furthur. Are cows acting as an insulin buffer? They are releasing the insulin and storing fat based on their pancreas while by the time it gets to me that has already been done. I'm currently trying to dig up some data on what % Americans are overweight by in relationship to their normal weight or height. If anyone knows of reliable data could you post a link in the comments?

Of course I also know there's different kinds of beef like 

U.S. Prime - Highest in quality and intramuscular fat, limited supply. Currently, about 2.9% of carcasses grade as Prime
U.S. Choice - High quality, widely available in food service industry and retail markets. Choice carcasses are 53.7% of the fed cattle total. The difference between Choice and Prime is largely due to the fat content in the beef. Prime typically has a higher fat content (more and well distributed intramuscular "marbling") than Choice

What I'm trying to answer are these questions: Is human body fat storage a simple system of creating fat cells in ratio to the insulin released from the highest insulin release during any given meal?

Can the dietary promotion of an insulin % reliably predict your body fat %?

PS while looking for a simpler word than promotion or stimulation to describe insulin release I found these synonyms

incentive, incitement, invigoration, refreshment

Related posts

http://positivelyblackswan.blogspot.com/2011/01/glycemic-load-per-calorie-comparison.html