STATISTICS AND SPORTS

Catalog description

Baseball is the most statistical of all sports. A flood of different statistical measures (available in newspapers, books, trading cards and on the Internet) are used to plan strategy on the field and to rate player performance and salary. Can anyone make sense of these proliferating data? In this course, students apply basic statistical and probabilistic thinking to the game of baseball. Probability models and basic methods of data analysis are illustrated by means of baseball statistics collected on players and teams. Statistical analyses are applied to get to the truths hidden within the data, to assess predictions of game results, and to evaluate the role of chance in the game. Although focused on baseball data, students develop the general logical reasoning skills necessary for reaching any conclusions that have a statistical basis.