Stats in the Wild

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Category: Sports

  • NCAA Basketball top 25 (in the wild)

    (Bold Indicates Sweet Sixteen team.) StatsInTheWild top 25: 1. Kansas 2. Kentucky 3. Syracuse 4. West Virginia 5. Villanova 6. New Mexico 7. Duke 8. Temple 9. Kansas State 10. Georgetown 11. Baylor 12. Pittsburgh 13. Purdue 14. Texas A&M 15. Tennessee 16. Texas 17. Butler 18. Vanderbilt 19. Ohio State 20. Marquette 21. Maryland…

  • 2 Point Conversions (in the wild)

    This past weekend Navy attempted a 2 point conversion in their game against Ohio State. The conversion failed, and they ultimately lost the game. Clearly, in that situation, the 2 point conversion was necessary, but what about other situations that are more complicated? Luckily, someone else has already thought about this. So, in the spirit…

  • Unassisted Triple Plays (in the wild)

    Eric Bruntlett’s unassisted triple play ended the Phillies-Mets game last night. It was the 15th unassisted triple play in MLB history. From 1909-1927, there were 7 unassisted triple plays, and, since 1992, there have been 7 more unassisted triple plays. The striking thing here is that from 1927-1992, 64 seasons, there was only one unassisted…

  • Chernoff faces (in the wild)

    I took a multivariate class several years ago and towards the end of the semester the professor showed us Chernoff faces. I was thinking about them for some reason tonight, and so I figured I’d do a search for Chernoff faces on the internet. Here is an interesting application of Chernoff faces to MLB managers.…

  • NCAA Sweet 16 picks in the wild.

    After re-evaluating, here are my picks after the first two round of the NCAA tournament: Elite 8: Uconn, Pitt, Memphis, Villanova, Louisville, Oklahoma, Michigan State, UNC My final four is the same:Memphis, Louisville, Pitt, and UNC Finals: Memphis versus Pitt Winner: Memphis Good picks for the sweet 16 games: (Winner are in Bold, losers are…

  • Gambling on Sports in the Wild

    Of course, we’re not gambling with American dollars. That would be illegal, so we use “standard betting units” here. (1 “standard betting unit” is approximately 1 American dollar. But it is definitely NOT an American dollar.) From my previous post before the first round started. Winners are in bold, losers are in italics: Good first…

  • NCAA basketball in the wild

    It’s that time of year again where I care about college basketball for three weeks and then forget it even exists. I have collected data on all of the games played so far (through last nights 6OT thriller) and I use some standard modeling techniques to come up with a ranking. Last year I accurately…

  • Lou Pinella in the Wild

    I was reading some past “Stats of the Day” over at baseball reference and I stumbled onto this factoid: Lou Pinella is the only player (1956-2008) to have more than 100 career home runs without a single multi-homer game. The entire post can be found here. Cheers.

  • Stats in the NFL: Part 2 (in the wild)

    In a previous post, I talked about parity in the NFL (or lack of parity) between teams. What about parity between divisions? What we want to do is test the null hypothesis that all divisions are the same (ie will end the season with the same number of wins.) To do this we can use…

  • Stats in the NFL: Part 1 (in the wild)

    So the Jets blew it. They were 8-3 and they finished the season 1-4 to miss the playoffs at 9-7. I was reading this article on the Freakonomics blog. Attempts/completions: 175/98 Passing yards: 1,011 Touchdowns: 2 Interceptions: 9 Sacks: 9 Passer rating: 55.4 This is terrible. Make the guy retire. He WAS great. WAS. So…