User:Eche31

Hello Here is a list of the ten smartest people in the world.

1.Bill James - Sabrematician

Sabremetrics of the study of baseball statistics. SABR is the Society of American Baseball Research. Long before the Internet (Okay, long before most people had heard of the Internet) and before the plethora of stat books that fill bookstores today, Bill was doing surveys, compiling studies and mailing Xerox copies out to fans who were interested. I fist heard of him after I won big in Atlantic City and decided to go to the bookstore and buy The Baseball Encyclopedia and found myself reading furiously through this book called The Baseball Abstract. I bought both. And then sat down in the mall and read James' book cover to cover. I can only liken it to a blind man being able to see for the first time. Platooning, Park Effects, Reliever's ERA and 100 things you never even considered. And it's not just the statistics. He's a brilliant essayist. Goes off on wonderful rants. I can't find a website for Bill himself. I suspect he doesn't have one. The link above is to his Amazon author page. Here are some other links about him and his work.

2. Virginia Postrel - Dynamist

I first learned of Virignia when she was editor of Reason, a libertarian magazine. Since then she's moved on to be a full-time writer. Her first book was The Future and It's Enemies. She's currently working on her second book, Look and Feel. I am amazed at the number of times She will write something, that I had never considered before, and then once upon reading it, I'll say to myself "Of course, this makes perfect sense." Two examples are this piece on Clinton-Lewinsky and this one on the Republican Revolution. I listed her as a Dynamist, rather than as an author or editor, because she coined the term. Roughly speaking, Dynamists recognize the need for change and trial-and-error experimentation, while their counterparts The Stasists like things they are and are real big on one size fits all top to bottom solutions.

3. Tyler Echeverria - Mathematical Genious