I’ve often thought about the football situation FSK describes in NFL Fnords. A football team scores a touchdown with no time remaining, an extra point will tie the game and send it to overtime, but a successful two-point conversion will win it. I always say “Go for the two point conversion!”
There is rarely a better opportunity to win a football game than from the 2-yard line. Going for two points gives you an immediate opportunity to win the game, your chances are in the neighborhood of 40%.
If you go for the tie, you’ve only got about a 95% chance of making the kick, and a 50% chance of receiving the kickoff. You only have a 45% chance that you’ll even have the first opportunity to score in overtime, there is a 5% chance that you’ll lose the game because you missed the kick, and a 50% chance that the other team will get the ball first in OT. (Note: winning in OT does not appear to be strongly correlated with the result of the OT coin flip, I think it’s about 50/50)
That notwithstanding, your odds of winning in OT are dependent upon either:
putting together a drive long enough to kick a field goal, where your kicker has an 80% chance of success.
putting together a drive long enough to score a touchdown.
preventing the other team from doing either (1) or (2) and then doing (1) or (2).
Both of the first two scenarios depend on a series of successful plays, no turnovers, no penalties, etc. The game-winning OT touchdown drive, assuming that your RB doesn’t break one for 20+ yards, will probably come down to a play from scrimmage at the 2-yard line, in which case you’re right back where you started. This scenario is objectively less likely a priori to win the game than just going for the two-point conversion in the first place. The field-goal scenario may be your best chance, but remember that you’ve got only a 50% chance to receive the kick in OT. If you lose the coin-toss, you’ve got to stop the other team from doing either (1) or (2) and then successfully score a touchdown or a field goal of your own.
Via e-mail, Kip from A Stitch in Haste directed me to the snowboarder menace. Bramwell doesn’t want to share the mountain with boarders, he wants his own personal stash of endless powder. I’ve got some advice: invest in some good back country gear, and learn to hoof it. The best powder isn’t serviced by any lift.
Now, in all fairness Bramwell’s rant was toungue-in-cheek, but it’s still a bit hyperbolic for my taste. Some commenters referred to snowboarding as evidence of “the decay of society”.
Unless Bramwell is a professional, I’m fairly confident that I could ride anywhere he skis. And I’d probably look better doing it. Anyways, his complaints are numerous:
Snowboarders make wider turns than skiers, thereby leaving less room on the slope for others.
While skiers face downhill, snowboarders make half their turns blind, forcing everyone on the slope to get of their way to avoid getting hit.
While skiers carve turns, snowboarders (even the best of them) plow
The presence of snowboarders “now makes great skiing impossible.”
One commenter, a lifelong skier, did bring up the most important point, arguably defending the snowboarding menace:
Snowboarding saved skiing. No ifs, ands, or buts. By the mid-1980’s skiing was dying. Boarding brought a new generation out to play on the mountain. And that’s good.
True. It was snowboarding that saved skiing. Without snowboarding, it’s likely there would be far fewer ski areas from which to choose, those areas would be less developed, and lift tickets would probably be more expensive. I read an article years ago about some of the resorts in the Alps and even in the States, the proprietors of which described snowboarding as a godsend.
If kids didn’t want to go to Disney World, Walt would be out of business. The push-marketing game, “You can have any color you want, as long as it’s black” doesn’t wor any more. All the kids want to snowboard. Resorts cater primarily to family vacations. If the resort wants a bigger share of the vacation wallet, (e.g., Mom’s day at the Spa, Dad’s $40 steak dinner washed down with $8 beers, etc.) it needs to cater to the entire family. QED..
This commenter offers another explanation for the seeming crowdedness of slopes where boarders are present:
Occasionally I see a boarder in the glades/woods. Never in a chute, steep pitch, headwall (except sliding down on their posterior), and virtually NEVER in a mogul field.
This is selectively true. It may be true most of the time for most snowboarders, but it’s also true most of the time, for most skiers.
As an avid boarder, I love the glades. There aren’t enough of them here in Michigan. And if I can find a good, natural mogul field, you better believe I’m headed straight for it. But Michigan moguls are usually vulgar mounds of solid ice. Sure, most boarders won’t touch a mogul field, but most skiers won’t, either. We also don’t have steeps or chutes, but I’m proud to say that I handled my own at JHMR last February, even crossing paths with several Moose.
Note to Bramwell: the “cacophonous” cruuunch is due to the fact that the steeps at JHMR were entirely iced over that day. They were wicked iced over, the type of iced over that happens after a few days of melt, and maybe some freezing rain. Chunky, choppy, sick, and not a lot of fun. Fortunately we had a sick powder day at Targhee.
As for Bramwell’s objections:
There are an awful lot of skiers who make embarrassingly wide s-turns, and there are an awful lot of skiers who frankly have no business being on the slopes. The only thing worse than a novice snowboarder, is a novice skier, who is capable of going even faster than his single-planked counterparts, with not one iota more control.
Additionally, when snowboarding, your torso should be pointed down the mountain, just like it would be if you were on skis. You may have marginally less peripheral vision to your left (if you ride regular) than you would on skis, but you have a greater range of vision to your right. Recognizing this, a good snowboarder is aware of his surroundings and “blind” turns essentially don’t exist.
Snowboarders plow? If I’m not mistaken, the “pizza” or “wedge” is a staple in every first-timer’s ski lessons. Many skiers barely evolve past this rudimentary technique. I’ll admit that lots of snowboarders don’t know how to point their nose down a fall line and charge, but the same is true for most skiers, who never figure out how to make parallel turns, and end up flailing, pointy ski poles swinging haphazardly down the hill.
As for the difficulty of finding “great skiing”, I’m not sure where Bramwell is skiing, but neither JHMR or Targhee were overcrowded in any sense of the word. I also found that the slopes at Whistler/Blackcomb, The Canyons in Park City, Kirkwood, Alpine Meadows, and Heavenly at Lake Tahoe had plenty of acreage to share, whether you were on one plank or two.
I want to plan arrival for 2/15 or 2/16 and departure on 2/19 or 2/20. Every time I try to price out a trip to PC, I get the following error, despite the fact that I did choose a lodging option.
I am sorry but we could not price out your custom trip quote because of the following errors:
You are missing the following required products: Lodging.
The website indicates that “If your lodging does not price out it is generally because you have not met the minimum nights required for that particular property during the selected time period” but I can find no rules regarding minimum stays, anywhere on the site. I’m surprised if a 4- or 5-night stay does not meet these minimum requirements, even for a holiday week.
Could you help me out with this?
Also, I’m there is a fine team of programmers and developers working behind the scenes to make sure the website functions properly and is user-friendly, but I think this error message could be handled better.
1. There should be a reference to minimum stay or other requirements (e.g., 3 nights for holiday weekends, etc.) for general lodging inquiries.
2. If invalid/insufficient stay is selected:
a. An error message should appear immediately, informing the user of the requirements.
i. The error message should be unambiguous
ii. The error message hould not be a vague reference to an advisement (equally vague) found elsewhere on the site.
iii. The error message should not appear after the user has selected all of his/her options (lift tickets, lodging, transport, etc.) and created a profile.
b. User should have the option to select new dates without starting over.
I have no idea whether you can pass this on to the people who develop the site, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to offer the suggestion. I might be the only person willing to point it out, but I’m sure I’m not the only person to encounter this problem with your booking engine.
