If You Like Sports And Charts You Will Love These Charts About Sports

There is an old joke that goes something like this:

A guy calls his bookie and says, “Okay, how’d I do on the baseball game?”

“Terrible,” says the bookie. “You lost ten grand.”

“Ten grand? Shit. Well, I must have broken even on football.”

“No way,” says the bookie. “There was an interception that totally screwed you on the spread.”

“SHIT SHIT SHIT” screams the guy. “What about the basketball game?”

“Don’t even ask,” says the bookie.

The guy starts weeping. “Where am I gonna find thirty frigging grand? What am I gonna tell my wife? What the hell am I gonna do?”

“Well,” says the bookie, “you can always try to even it out by rolling it over on the hockey match.”

“Hockey?” the guy screams into the phone. “What the fuck do I know about HOCKEY?”

That’s it, that’s the bit. It’s funny because the guy clearly knows nothing any of the sports — which are, in the magical way things only happen in jokes, somehow all in season at the same time — but he believes that it is only hockey about which he is ignorant. It is a metaphor for our own cognitive biases. But it speaks to a larger point: Who the hell does know anything about hockey? It turns out, rich people. I’m as surprised as you are.