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Mathematician Predicts Yankees To Dominate

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the safe-bets dept.

anthemaniac writes "Computerized projections in sports are nothing new, but Bruce Bukiet of the New Jersey Institute of Technology has developed a model that seems to work pretty well. He projects how many games a Major League Baseball team will win by factoring in how each hitter ought to do against each pitcher in every game. His crystal ball says the Yankees will win 110 games this year, a pretty safe bet, many might agree. But he also projects all the divisional winners. He claims to be right more than wrong in five of the past six years."

4 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. 110 wins? by nebaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a safe bet that the Yankees will do well, they always seem to spend almost twice as much as most other teams on talent, not to mention luring good players from other teams away to crush competition. Having said that, they have always spent such money, and not done exceptionally well as of late. 110 wins is a lot, and not many tesms have accomplished that. Safe bet? Hardly.

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  2. Huh? by Kuukai · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While Bukiet is the first to admit he's not a baseball expert, in five out of the past six years, he says that his model has produced more correct than incorrect predictions. What? Does this even mean anything? If, say, he was right 51% percent of the time five years and wrong 90% of the time that other year, wouldn't that make his number of successes less than the expected number of successes from just guessing "win" or "lose"? I guess he's either really modest ("I don't like to brag, so I'll just say the accuracy is higher than 42%."), or a really, really bad statician.
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  3. Re:I never understand these things... by Burdell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is still trying to predict future results based on past performance. No matter what you predict, last year's Chipper Jones will never again face last year's Roger Clemens. Even if Clemens un-retires (again), he is not the same person, and neither is Chipper Jones. You also can't predict injuries, trades, managers' decisions, umpires' calls, weather, etc., all of which have an impact on the outcome of an individual game.

  4. Climate Models? by Matteo522 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So let me get this straight..

    Climatologists use past data, computer models, and mathematical projections to support global warming and predict future results, and everyone calls it strong science based on facts. If the models are off, it's just a part of the scientific process, but the overall claim is still valid.

    But if a statistician uses past data, computer models, and mathematical projections to predict baseball results, it's dismissed as some crack job's phony science. If the models are off, it's proof that he has no idea what he's doing and how these kinds of models don't work.

    Am I missing something here?