Just listened to a fun interview that Bill Simmons did with stats guru Bill James at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. I paid close attention to James’ ability to remember names and dates, and like pretty much every informavore I’ve ever encountered, his recall isn’t very good. The memory is just so elastic even for someone who’s brilliant, except for a few anomalies. Interesting that James points out that he was actually aided in his early career in the 1970s by working with numbers in a time before everyone had a computer or two in their pocket. Because collecting and crunching info was so difficult in an unwired world, others interested in sports stats pretty much gave up while James soldiered on. An excerpt from James talking about his first use of computers:

“Bill Simmons: There’s no way you’re using a computer at this time?

Bill James: We didn’t have personal computers, no. Everything was handwritten and in notebooks.

Bill Simmons: When did you move over to the personal computer?

Bill James: I enjoyed personal compyers as soon as they came out–

Bill Simmons: I would have guessed.

Bill James: I never could program or anything like that. We had a Kaypro…I had a spreadsheet on it that was 32 cells long and 16 wide.”

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A great 1983 Kaypro commercial by ad legend Joe Sedelmaier: