Scott Evans, CHANCE Editor
Interest in statistics for many people begins with sports. Indeed, sports may be responsible for many statisticians becoming statisticians (professional and amateur). The September 2014 issue of CHANCE is devoted to methods and applications in sports statistics.
It is an exciting time for statistics in sports. New technologies have created an explosion of data available for analyses. Meanwhile Moneyball has brought attention to the value of statistical thinking in game strategies and player evaluation.
The lead-off hitter for the special sports issue of CHANCE is Jim Albert, editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. Albert evaluates streakiness (a popular topic in sports statistics) in home run hitting by evaluating spacings between consecutive home runs to see what streaky performances tell us about the “streaky abilities” of players.
Krista Fischer and Donald A. Berry then describe the case of Andrus Veerpalu, an Estonian Olympic Gold Medalist in cross‐country skiing who tested positive for human growth hormone and was barred from competition. This decision was overturned on appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The rationale for the decision was faulty use of statistics in the interpretation of the test results.
Albert then interviews Carl Morris, professor of statistics at Harvard University and a pioneer in the development of statistical methodologies in sports. Morris talks with Albert about using sports examples in research and the current and future use of statistical thinking in sports.
Hitting clean-up, Richard Smith, Scott Powers, and Jessi Cisewski discuss projections they made that were instrumental in the decision to tighten the qualifying time standards at the Boston Marathon. The methods used provide a systematic means of fine-tuning the qualifying times to achieve targeted goals for the overall field size and distribution across sex and age groups.
Jason Wilson and Jarvis Greiner describe a curveball index, a methodology for measuring the quality of curve balls in baseball. They discuss how the index could be used to improve pitcher training as a scouting tool.
In the column A Statistician Reads the Sports Pages, Ben Baumer and Greg Mathews critically evaluate the wins-above-replacement (WAR) statistic in baseball, noting its lack of reproducibility, lack of a reference implementation, and lack of uncertainty. They propose an alternative for computing WAR to address these issues.
In The Big Picture, Nicole Lazar discusses Big Data in sports. She notes that big sport is big business, and big business means Big Data. In Visiphilia, Di Cook evaluates whether Nick Kyrgios can be a tennis champion.
There are three major sport statistics symposia. Perhaps the most well known is the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference that is held annually in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It focuses on many quantitative issues, especially business. MathSport International is a conference held biannually in Europe that focuses on statistics, econometrics, and operations research. Finally, there is the New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports (NESSIS), held biannually at Harvard University. NESSIS is organized and run by CHANCE Column Editor Mark Glickman and Executive Editor Scott Evans. Consider attending the next NESSIS, to be held September 26, 2015.
Please take note of the upcoming “Women in Statistics” issue of CHANCE, which will be out in November. This special issue features several articles highlighting sessions at the 2014 Women in Statistics Conference, organized by Dalene Stangl, and a special interview with Janet Wittes, president of Statistics Collaborative.
Also note the “Give Them a CHANCE” campaign and encourage people to sponsor deserving special students.
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