Hello! For my 380 talk, I will be discussing how you can use statistics in order to predict the outcome of baseball games, a process also known as Sabermetrics. This will be based on the the paper “Quasi-geometric Distributions and Extra Inning Baseball Games” by Darren Glass and Philip J. Lowry, found in Volume 81 of Mathematics Magazine. For anyone who is unfamiliar with probability and/or baseball, a brief overview of both will be discussed.
If you are interested in Sabermetrics and want to read about it further, I would recommend looking at The Baseball Research Journal, published by SABR
Data used for computations is pulled from Baseball Reference.
-LT
Relevant topic, and presented with ease. This presentation presented a valid explanation for something that is very frustrating. It’s understandable that airlines want to maximize revenue because of the immense difficulty they have with their finances. The airline industry as a whole is fascinating. I thought it was clever to use Southwest because of the uniformity, but I also wonder how things change when you incorporate different classes and different size planes within one company. I would think first class seats generally are overbooked less often than economy seats, but I can think of arguments for both sides. Good presentation overall.
Baseball is sports analytics heaven, so you picked a very wise topic for a math talk. The formula was very complex so I give you credit for your ability to break it apart and explain it piece by piece with such confidence and ease. Coming from a guy who enjoys betting on baseball, I see endless possibilities with this application of comparing teams based on runs per inning while playing similar teams. Overall, the presentation flowed, the math was flawlessly broken down and presented in a simple manor. Chalk it up as a home run.