Martin Cobern is VP, R&D of APS Technology Inc., in Wallingford, CT. He has known Stan for over 30 years and was one of many who read and commented on his book. Sandlot Stats. He grew up as a Dodger fan in the Bronx, until the great Western betrayal left him without a team. When …
This posting will use four baseball statistics, batting average (AVG), in-play batting average (IPBA), strike-out average (SOA) and home-run average (HRA). Their definitions are AVG = #H/#AB, IPBA = #H/(#AB−#SO), SOA =#SO/#AB and HRA = #HR/#AB. It turns out that AVG = IPBA*(1−SOA). The two figures below show these four statistics for the years 1901 thru …
One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from the great football coach Bill Parcells. When referring to a team’s performance Parcells said, “You are what your won-loss record says you are.” Well as of June 24, 2013 the Yankees’ record is 41-34 and they are 2.5 games out of first place. According to Coach Parcells’ …
On April 22, 2013, I was invited to speak at Amity Regional HS in CT. Unlike some other trips this was a short excursion of 30 minutes from my house. I was told that I would be talking to an AP Statistics Class, other math students and teachers. I wanted to choose a statistics topic …
One of the many contributions of Bill James to the field of sabermetrics was his Pythagorean Theorem for baseball. The theorem states that the ratio of a team’s wins to losses is equal to the square of the ratio of the team’s runs scored to the team’s runs allowed. The equation is (Wins / Losses) …