On the Tigers' goose egg

Okay, so the Detroit Tigers are off to an 0-6 start. We've gotten the mandatory barrage of "only two teams have recovered from an 0-6 start to make the postseason." I feel compelled to chime in with my elementary knowledge of statistics...

These first six games are 3.7 percent of the schedule. If the Tigers can go, say, 92-64 the rest of the way, we'll probably see them in the postseason. So, then, why the poor performance by teams that open 0-6? Without any actual numbers, as I'm not the person who will have time to run them, I'd assert that, over the long term, teams have an equal probability of having a losing streak at any point in the season. From that assertion, it follows that teams which are worse have a higher probability of beginning the season with a losing streak, just as they have a higher probability of having a losing streak in any single stretch during the season. If you break it down, I'm "guessing" (or declaring) you'd find that teams with six-game losing streaks to begin the season also have a higher overall rate of losing streaks during the season (which, after all, makes sense, since only two of them have made the playoffs).

ESPN's Jayson Stark points out: "Of the last seven teams that won the World Series, five of them had losing streaks of six games or more at some point that season -- several of them had multiple losing streaks of six games or more." Right, but they probably had fewer losing streaks than everyone else, right?

So, is the Tigers' fate sealed? Clearly not, but they'll have to be a statistical outlier--a good team that just happened to begin the season 0-6.

Montenegro: President Vujanovic wins reelection

From early returns in Montenegro, it appears that President Filip Vujanović has handily won reelection, taking a majority of votes cast (around 52%). Vujanović is a part of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, the party of PM Milo Đukanović (the Milosević ally-turned-enemy also known for allegedly smuggling into Italy and backing NATO during the Kosovo crisis for, perhaps, his own opportunistic ends; Đukanović quit in 2006, then decided he couldn't stay just in private business and returned to office in February).

At any rate, this is a pretty resounding mandate for the ruling coalition, which has been in control since the early '90s. A quickly growing economy--especially since leaving the union with Serbia--may have much to do with that. The pro-Serb opposition candidate appears to have received just over 20 percent, and a liberal candidate around 17 percent. The president is a typical European ceremonial president, so the significance of this is essentially as a voter endorsement for Đukanović's resumption of power and the ruling DPS (whose continued stranglehold over Montenegrin government is, however, a little worrying).

One interesting/misleading quote from the AP article is:

"Ethnic Serbs, who make up about 30 percent of the population, opposed the split."

Note that the difference between "ethnic Serbs" and "ethnic Montenegrins" is political; they speak the same language (be it "Serbian" or "Montenegrin") and are the same in everything except for their ethnic self-definition. Compare to the "Moldovan" and "Romanian" languages, or perhaps "Valencian" and "Catalan." Therefore, the definition is somewhat tautological; "ethnic Serbs" by definition consider Montenegro and Serbia one country.

See also election article at Wikipedia.