Red Hot Hockey, 11/25/17

[scoop85]

Nice feature on Morgan Barron posted today on the Rangers' SBNation blog, Blueshirt Banter

[Swampy]

We love our goalie, but BU's Jake Oettinger was the first goalie taken in the 2017 draft. To light the lamp on him 4 times is an accomplishment. As a freshman in the spring he made 56 saves in the NCAA OT win over defending champ North Dakota and for the year had a 2.1 GA average. I was about to type GPA not GA. But maybe that, too. He's in BU's College of General Studies, CGS being a catch-all for some underclassmen unsure of where they're headed. BU students sometimes refer to CGS as "Crayons, Glue, Scissors." Cruel.

Similar for west coast schools with Department of Unclassified Studies.  "DUHHHHHHS..."

I'm quite familiar with CGS, since I have a kid who went there (and who currently makes almost double what I was last making before I retired). It's true that students call it Crayons, etc., but the model is very good, and I wish other schools -- including Cornell -- had something like it. It's not at all like the Departments of Unclassified Studies (DUS) one finds on the west coast, nor is it like "University Colleges" (UC's) one sometimes find elsewhere. DUS are simply places for students who haven't decided on a major yet. UC's are where incoming students matriculate during their first two years even though they already know their majors, and in many cases have already been accepted into their majors. UC's provide varying degrees of support (advising, counseling, study halls, etc.) to help with the transition to college. But otherwise, both DUS and UC's are similar in curriculum. Typically their students spend most of their time fulfilling general education requirements; but the requirements are so broad, vague, and varied that there's no rhyme nor reason unique to the DUS or UC. E.g., engineering students are fulfilling their GE with the usual menu of calculus +, physics, etc., while other students never see anything like these subjects. It's common that students have to take vague distribution requirements ("Take two humanities courses and call me in the morning."). It's not uncommon to select from over 10,000 credit hours of offerings to satisfy a 40-hour GE requirement. In both cases, what and if students learn is a total crap shoot and a clear indication that the school has no idea of what it expects its students to know. (Compare with Columbia's famous freshman curriculum or MIT's we-don't-care-if-you're-majoring-in-linguistics-everyone-here-completes-an-engineering-core approaches).

BU established CGS after WW II. It recognized that the majority of students enrolling under the GI Bill had been away from formal education for several years and, in many cases, had not planned to go to college when they were younger. Now that they were older, more mature, and could afford a college education, they needed help making the transition and getting up to speed for what was then college-level work. CGS did this with the novel approach of stipulating almost all the courses students take during their first two years. They all take the same sequence of required courses, with only one or two electives during the entire time. Furthermore, the courses are team-taught, designed by groups of faculty members with expertise in the field, and coordinated with each other. So, for example, students may be learning about the Enlightenment in the History & Society sequence around the same time as they are learning about Newton's contributions in the Natural Science sequence.

Over time students typically came to enroll in CGS in one of two ways. Some desired this highly structured, "we-actually-do-think-we-know-what-all-college-graduates-should-know" approach. Alternatively -- and probably much more commonly -- BU accepts students who indicate their desired majors, but instead of initially enrolling them immediately in the college housing those majors, BU accepts them into CGS. The decision is based on the student's academic profile: the student is capable of succeeding at BU, but in the judgement of the admissions committee needs more/better preparation, more structure, or both to get the most out of their four years there. And there is no guarantee that CGS students will be accepted into their desired majors as juniors, although the vast majority are. No doubt, upon learning this some prospective students who have their hearts set on engineering, film & television, business, or other majors decide to go elsewhere. But those who stay go into CGS and then transfer to their desired major in their junior year.

In a sense the distinction between CGS students and others is somewhat moot. Students may be directly admitted to a particular major, but in most cases during their first two years these students take at most 1-2 courses in that major. Most of the rest of their time is spent satisfying GE requirements.

When my wife and I first heard that our son had been admitted to CGS instead of his desired major we thought, "What is this. Some sort of booby prize?" But as we learned more about CGS, we came to agree with BU's decision. Knowing our son, we both said this was exactly what he needed: take the decision-making and uncertainty out of his hands, make him learn what older, wiser people believe he needs to know, and do so in a structured, well thought-out way. But we didn't stop there. We spoke with members of the faculty in the department our son wanted, and what we frequently heard was that CGS students are, if anything, better prepared and do better than students admitted to the department directly from high school. We also spoke with the dean of CGS: she was very proud of the program but admitted that math is the one subject that CGS has not figured out how to teach in a rigorous, high-level way to a student body with interests and aptitudes spanning all of BU's undergraduate offerings. So math is the one subject in which CGS students vary during their first two years. But still, and despite this, the fact that, e.g., future engineering students and history majors sit together and take the same courses in natural science and in history and society is pretty impressive -- and unlike what one sees at the vast majority of universities around the country.

When I compare this to my own education at Cornell, I'm a bit envious. My education in engineering was excellent, although even when I was still working as an engineer I never used most of what I studied. I'm also quite certain that this engineering education was much stronger than at the vast majority of universities in the world. Consider:

• Once at Cornell I audited a business economics course, and after the first prelim a student stood up and yelled at the professor, "In all my undergraduate years at Yale, I never had to work this hard!" My group of friends from engineering just smiled, since although this was a challenging course it was nothing like what we were used to.
• About 15-20 years later, I was having dinner with some engineering professors from Stanford; when I told them I was a Cornell engineer, they said, "That's brutal. We regularly have about a dozen students tranferring here because the work at Cornell was too much."
• A few years earlier I had been browsing in the bookstore at UC Berkely, and I saw the textbook that had been used in the required statistics course at Cornell my junior year; except, Berkeley was using the text for its statistics PhD program.

I don't mean to point out just that Cornell was rigorous and hard. E.g., I do believe that those of us who learned even 50% of what that statistics course covered still learned more than students who learned 80% of the less rigorous undergraduate statistics courses commonly taught elsewhere.

But my broader education was seriously wanting. Besides freshman English, I was never required to take any humanities, any history, any social science, any arts, or what have you. One thing Cornell did teach me was how to learn and how to be confident in my ability to learn, no matter what the subject. So I have done considerable learning in these subjects since graduating Cornell. Still, I didn't learn to speak Spanish until I lived in South America, and I tried to learn French by enrolling in an extension course at Harvard but never had the time I needed to spend in the language lab.

On a larger scale, the U.S. likes to brag about its system of higher education. Indeed, in Schooling in Capitalist America Bowles and Gintis present data indicating that during the 1930s roughly 5% of all students went on to have some postsecondary education, but by the 1960s this had risen to about 60%. So higher education went from being an elite privilege to a mass phenomenon. If the standards had remained constant, this would indeed be quite an achievement. But we all know this is not the case. In most cases, higher education expanded though a factory model. High school "academic" tracks and "factory colleges" -- especially large state universities -- watered down what a college education used to be. Today, even by the time they graduate, undergraduates at third- and even some second-tier universities never even see the material, master the skills, or acquire the knowledge that highly selective universities still routinely require during freshman year. Outside the most elite universities, the rest have dealt with this via a wink and a nod, coupled with grade inflation and reliance on student evaluations to keep in line any professors who might otherwise react to this scandal. AFAIK, CGS at BU is one of the all too few examples of an attempt to address this issue in a serious way.

[upprdeck]

when you see cornell is top 5 in scoring without any player near the top you know we are getting production from multiple players and that is always a good thing

[Swampy]

when you see cornell is top 5 in scoring without any player near the top you know we are getting production from multiple players and that is always a good thing

To get away from expressing my admiration for BU's CGS program, here's another thought. Wouldn't it be terrific if for each game there were a bar chart showing points (goals & assists) scored for and against each line? Typically the lines would be numbered 1-4, with the graph split so that points to the right of center are scored by the team and points to the left are scored against the team.

Then, as the season progresses, there could be an aggregate plot, independent of which individuals are playing on which line. For each team one could easily see how balanced the scoring has been: assuming Line 1 is at the top, an inverted pyramid indicates heavy reliance on Lines 1 & 2, while something more akin to a rectangle indicates balanced scoring.

[Trotsky]

The lines vary but it is a nice idea.

[BearLover]

Perhaps this is the royal road for us competing nationally perennially. We will never get the true blue chippers who go to Minnesota and North Dakota because, now how can I put this delicately?, because they're rock stupid.

But those guys are also just using the NC$$ as a quick stop before moving on to become inevitable NHL stars. They are being drafted by the NHL for who they will be at 25. Right now they may be kinda a mess.

We, on the other hand, can make our living in the top 10 with guys with the admissions scores (well, at least for Hotel) who are wonderful players at 21 but won't be developing much more if at all. They are leveraging their hockey skill to get an education to avoid going back to Ma and Pa Kettle's dirt farm in Manitoba, and hey, that's what we can provide.

This post is pretty elitist. A lot of players choose scholarship schools over Ivies for financial reasons. And a lot of players leave school early for financial reasons too. Most of all, very few if any players are coming to Cornell to "avoid going back to Ma and Pa Kettle's dirt farm in Manitoba"--not really sure where you got that impression.

And regarding what several posters have said about the advantages of drafted players: the BUs, BCs, North Dakotas, Minnesotas, and Michigans of the world, i.e. the perennial powers, are stocked with draftees. Yes, players are drafted in large part based on potential, but that potential is often realized. Think back to the best Cornell players over its history. Dryden, Nieuwendyk, Ratushny, LeNeveu, Murray, Moulson, Riley Nash, Greening, Joakim Ryan, Ferlin...all draft picks. The other ECAC teams too have seen a disproportionate number of their best players drafted. Vesey, Gostisbehere, nearly all of Harvard's offense last year. Sure, you can end up with a Scrivens or Vanderlaan who is a top-tier player without having been drafted, but on average you are going to be more successful the more draft picks you have.

[Trotsky]

This post is pretty elitist.

It's part of my charm.

[billhoward]

The lines vary but it is a nice idea.

Be nice to know how much ice time for each line, too. Maybe a half-dozen high-res cameras in the rafters and some machine learning could do the calculations unaided. Could also calculate optimal trajectories for fish at Harvard game.

[Swampy]

The lines vary but it is a nice idea.

I know. At its root it only assumes that there are 4 lines, or maybe only 3. The main point is to have a graphical display of the distribution of scoring, for and against. This could be on a per-game basis, monthly, cumulative, trending, etc.

A second, weaker assumption is that the lines are ordered, so that the starting line is the first line, the next one is the second line, etc. Alternatively, one could order them after a game by playing time. This still requires some consistency. Injuries, match-ups, and a coach making mid-game adjustments by changing the lines complicate things.

At the very least, one might have something like a team Gini coefficient, using individual players as the units of analysis, to measure a team's scoring balance. A coefficient of 0 indicates scoring is equally distributed among the players; a coefficient of 1 indicates one player is doing all the team's scoring.

It would be really interesting, for example, to plot a team's winning % against its coefficients over time. Or, to plot seasonal final standings against the coefficients. If, for example, balanced scoring improves chances of winning, as some of us have argued, then one should see a negative slope when winning % is plotted against team Gini coefficient.

[Swampy]

The lines vary but it is a nice idea.

Be nice to know how much ice time for each line, too. Maybe a half-dozen high-res cameras in the rafters and some machine learning could do the calculations unaided. Could also calculate optimal trajectories for fish at Harvard game.

Normalize the scoring measure by dividing by ice time: scoring per minute.

[billhoward]

And to think this all used to be figured out by a guy in the pressbox named Red with a plug of tobacco in his cheek.

[billhoward]

If you tally up the tickets you bought to attend all six Red Hot Hockey games for yourself, your family, friends you got tickets for who backed out last minute, bridge and tunnel tolls, parking, dining, drinks before and after, refreshments ($12 for Bud Light?) in that most famous arena, we were closing in on two grand by the time Galadja and the defense finally secured a W for the team and the fans. It was sweet.

[marty]

This post is pretty elitist.

It's part of my charm.

He opened Pandora's box.

[billhoward]

This post is pretty elitist.

It's part of my charm.

As a figure of speech, dirt farm in Manitoba had a certain Leona Helmsley-esque charm.

[Beeeej]

If you tally up the tickets you bought to attend all six Red Hot Hockey games for yourself, your family, friends you got tickets for who backed out last minute, bridge and tunnel tolls, parking, dining, drinks before and after, refreshments ($12 for Bud Light?) in that most famous arena, we were closing in on two grand by the time Galadja and the defense finally secured a W for the team and the fans. It was sweet.

And worth every penny. Plus, you got to learn which friends to exclude from future block purchases (at least if they backed out without paying).

But you misspelled "Galajda," so you owe me another $2,000.