Since the first athletic events found a fan base, sports and statistics have always maintained a tight and at times mythical relationship. As a way to relay the telling of a game's drama and attest to the prodigious powers of the heroes involved, those reporting on the games tallied up the numbers that they believe best described the action and bes

Sport and statistics collide in this collection of articles (from American Statistical Association publications) on using statistics to analyze sport. Most of the articles will be accessible to readers with a general knowledge of statistics. New material from the editors and other notable contributors introduces each section of the book.

How statistical thinking and methodology can help you make crucial business decisions Straightforward and insightful, Statistical Thinking: Improving Business Performance, Second Edition, prepares you for business leadership by developing your capacity to apply statistical thinking to improve business processes. Unique and compelling, this book shows you how to derive actionable conclusions from data analysis, solve real problems, and improve real processes. Here, you'll discover how to implement statistical thinking and methodology in your work to improve business performance. Explores why statistical thinking is necessary and helpful Provides case studies that illustrate how to integrate several statistical tools into the decision-making process Facilitates and encourages an experiential learning environment to enable you to apply material to actual problems With an in-depth discussion of JMP® software, the new edition of this important book focuses on skills to improve business processes, including collecting data appropriate for a specified purpose, recognizing limitations in existing data, and understanding the limitations of statistical analyses.

Teaching Statistics Using Baseball is a collection of case studies and exercises applying statistical and probabilistic thinking to the game of baseball. Baseball is the most statistical of all sports since players are identified and evaluated by their corresponding hitting and pitching statistics. There is an active effort by people in the baseball community to learn more about baseball performance and strategy by the use of statistics. This book illustrates basic methods of data analysis and probability models by means of baseball statistics collected on players and teams. Students often have difficulty learning statistics ideas since they are explained using examples that are foreign to the students. The idea of the book is to describe statistical thinking in a context (that is, baseball) that will be familiar and interesting to students. The book is organized using a same structure as most introductory statistics texts. There are chapters on the analysis on a single batch of data, followed with chapters on comparing batches of data and relationships. There are chapters on probability models and on statistical inference. The book can be used as the framework for a one-semester introductory statistics class focused on baseball or sports. This type of class has been taught at Bowling Green State University. It may be very suitable for a statistics class for students with sports-related majors, such as sports management or sports medicine. Alternately, the book can be used as a resource for instructors who wish to infuse their present course in probability or statistics with applications from baseball. The second edition of Teaching Statistics follows the same structure as the first edition, where the case studies and exercises have been replaced by modern players and teams, and the new types of baseball data from the PitchFX system and fangraphs.com are incorporated into the text.

Nontechnical survey helps improve ability to judge statistical evidence and to make better-informed decisions. Discusses common pitfalls: unrealistic estimates, improper comparisons, premature conclusions, and faulty thinking about probability. 1974 edition.

Focuses on detailed instruction in a single statistical technique, simple linear regression (SLR), with the goal of gaining tools, understanding, and intuition that can be applied to other contexts.

What does it take to create a winning sports betting model?Many people are interested in learning how to make smarter sports betting wagers. Not many of those same people are excited at the prospect of learning applied statistics to better inform their choices. You can't entirely blame them. Statistics has a well-earned reputation for being somewhat inaccessible by non-academics. It is a field filled with heavy terminology, confusing formulaic notation and concepts not fully relevant to the beginning sports bettor. To make matters worse, nobody in possession of a positive edge model is all that keen to show you how it works. As a result of this, sports modelling successfully requires a toolbox that you largely have to assemble for yourself. This book is my attempt to correct that, as I pull back the curtain on Excel spreadsheet models and techniques I developed in my first few years of sports betting. It is designed to give you an accessible crash course on modelling that will get you up to speed on the key relevant principles of statistics with a minimum amount of heavy technical jargon. You'll learn the most effective concepts in an easy-to-understand way and greatly speed up your learning curve in the process. Best of all, I'll walk you through sports betting models for many major sports: NFL, NBA, NHL, AFL and the English Premier League. You'll even be able to download these spreadsheet models and work your way through them while following this book.We'll be doing all of this in one of the most user friendly programs available: Excel. This program might not be the expert's first choice of platform for modelling work, but you'll be surprised just how much you can do with a spreadsheet or two.If you're ready to take your sports modelling to the next level - open this book, fire up Excel, and let's get to work. See you on the inside.

One of the greatest changes in the sports world in the past 20 years has been the use of mathematical methods to analyze performances, recognize trends and patterns, and predict results. Analytic Methods in Sports: Using Mathematics and Statistics to Understand Data from Baseball, Football, Basketball, and Other Sports, Second Edition provides a concise yet thorough introduction to the analytic and statistical methods that are useful in studying sports. The book gives you all the tools necessary to answer key questions in sports analysis. It explains how to apply the methods to sports data and interpret the results, demonstrating that the analysis of sports data is often different from standard statistical analyses. The book integrates a large number of motivating sports examples throughout and offers guidance on computation and suggestions for further reading in each chapter. Features Covers numerous statistical procedures for analyzing data based on sports results Presents fundamental methods for describing and summarizing data Describes aspects of probability theory and basic statistical concepts that are necessary to understand and deal with the randomness inherent in sports data Explains the statistical reasoning underlying the methods Illustrates the methods using real data drawn from a wide variety of sports Offers many of the datasets on the author’s website, enabling you to replicate the analyses or conduct related analyses New to the Second Edition R code included for all calculations A new chapter discussing several more advanced methods, such as binary response models, random effects, multilevel models, spline methods, and principal components analysis, and more Exercises added to the end of each chapter, to enable use for courses and self-study

Since the first athletic events found a fan base, sports and statistics have always maintained a tight and at times mythical relationship. As a way to relay the telling of a game's drama and attest to the prodigious powers of the heroes involved, those reporting on the games tallied up the numbers that they believe best described the action and best defined the winning edge. However, they may not have always counted the right numbers. Many of our hallowed beliefs about sports statistics have long been fraught with misnomers. Whether it concerns Scottish football or American baseball, the most revered statistics often have little to do with any winning edge. Covering an international collection of sports, Statistical Thinking in Sports provides an accessible survey of current research in statistics and sports, written by experts from a variety of arenas. Rather than rely on casual observation, they apply the rigorous tools of statistics to re-examine many of those concepts that have gone from belief to fact, based mostly on the repetition of their claims. Leaving assumption behind, these researchers take on a host of tough questions- Is a tennis player only as good as his or her first serve? Is there such a thing as home field advantage? Do concerns over a decline in soccer's competitive balance have any merit? What of momentum-is its staying power any greater than yesterday's win? And what of pressure performers? Are there such creatures or ultimately, does every performer fall back to his or her established normative? Investigating a wide range of international team and individual sports, the book considers the ability to make predictions, define trends, and measure any number of influences. It is full of interesting and useful examples for those teaching introductory statistics. Although the articles are aimed at general readers, the serious researcher in sports statistics will also find t