What were the odds of Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak?

Links (5)

Schroedinger's Streak
Published 3/30/2008 by attackgerbil at YFSF
... The New York Times ran an op-ed piece today authored by Samuel Arbesman and Steven Strogatz of Cornell University that details the authors' efforts to use a comprehensive collection of baseball statistics from 1871-2005 in order to replay the history of baseball 10,000 times with the goal of determining the likelihood of Joe Dimaggio's 56 game hitting streak. I don't pretend to have anywhere near the level of smarts required to fully understand what they did, let alone weigh in on whether or not the methodology used was sound. I do fancy the idea that at the instant this ...

NESW Sports Headlines 3/30/2008
Published 3/30/2008 by ethanator1088 at NESW Sports, The Best Sports News
... What were the odds of Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak? < 56 games, near Impossible Joltin Joe ...

Some Linkaliciousness
Published 3/31/2008 by Adam J. Morris at Lone Star Ball: Front Page Posts
...  And some geeks with slide rules simulate all of baseball history 10,000 times, looking to see how unlikely it is that anyone would have a 56 game hitting streak...and determine that it really isn't that unlikely at all... ...

A Journey to Baseball’s Alternate Universe
Published 3/31/2008 at BBTF's Baseball Primer Newsblog
A Journey to Baseball’s Alternate Universe Man, I’m ready… got my goatee grown and sash in my closet, ready to go ... In a fit of scientific skepticism, we decided to calculate how unlikely Joltin’ Joe’s achievement really was. Using a comprehensive collection of baseball statistics from 1871 to 2005, we simulated the entire history of baseball 10,000 times in a computer. In essence, we programmed the computer to construct an enormous set of parallel baseball universes, all with the same players but subject to the vagaries of chance in each one. ... More than half the time, ...

Sam Arbesman's 109-game hitting streak shouldn't be tough to beat
Published 4/2/2008 at Roto Arcade
... The following quote is from a NY Times Op-Ed piece he co-authored with Steven Strogatz, a Cornell professor of applied mathematics: ...