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Mathematician Predicts Yankees To Dominate
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."
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.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Has he put up beaucoup bucks in Vegas on his numbers? If not, why not. If so, how much did he win, and where can I get his numbers this year?
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Isn't here some rule or law about 'fitting a curve' to past data? Yet, the sports predictions, and many of the 'stock market systems' are all about
finding some seemingly obvious pattern in past data. While you might come up with a 'back tested' model that matches really well,
it doesn't mean squat for the future.
Sendou Wave Kick!!
"Hello Mr. Bukiet"
"It's pronounced bouquet!"
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Wait, you mean you can use past data to try to predict future events under certain assumptions, and sometimes it works? Someone should generalize this into some sort of academic discipline!
Bruce is actually a die hard Mets fan. I helped work on this project with him back in my undergrad days 15 years ago or so. I doubt any of my code is still be used though. :-)
My UID is the product of 2 primes.
signed,
Red Sox fan
He claims to be right more than wrong in five of the past six years.
That's nothing: I've devloped a new mathematical algorithm that correctly predicts the outcome of the past six years with 100% accuracy.
In 2006, he predicted 102 Yankee wins. They won 97. Not too bad.
In 2005, he predicted 113 Yankee wins. They won 95. Way off.
In 2004, he predicted 117 Yankee wins. They won 101. Way off.
In 2003, he predicted 110 Yankee wins. They won 101. Not great.
In other words, take this forecast with a big boulder of salt.
My userid is prime!
Bill James came up with simple quantifiable statistics that could very accurately predict the success rate for a baseball team back in the '70s. The Oakland A's had a lot of success using those methods to put teams out of the field that would win between 95-100 games per year while spending as little as possible. It worked remarkably well and a book (Moneyball, by Michael Lewis) was written about it.
In short, this is old and well covered news, unless this guy has come up with a simulation that is significantly more accurate (doubtful).
The Pirates - 2nd lowest payroll - will suck again. 14 losing seasons in a row. I give it a 99.9% certainty they make it 15. I'm not even a MIT grad!
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?
Nobody could predict this one: http://www.planetworldcup.com/CUPS/1950/wc50index. html
and the "Macacos" still cry about this......
PEÃ'AROL: SerÃs eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera
Wow, I never expected somebody that I knew to get on Slashdot. Bruce Bukiet is my Calculus II professor at NJIT.
He mentioned this before a few times, including today after that article made it to the most popular spot on Yahoo! News. This is more of a hobby for him than an official project.
From what he has said in the past about the model, it tends to overestimate the Yankees, among other reasons, because they often buy good players at the end of their prime. Thus the players won't play as well as they had in the past. He hasn't used it to make any bets. For the model, coming within a game or two of the actual results is considered a good prediction.
As some people above said, the model isn't intended to be extremely accurate, and is frequently off by a significant amount. The interviews he does are more to get people interested in math, and to see how it has real use, rather than to try and show off. He used to go into more details in the past, but doesn't now because they tend to confuse the interviewer, and don't make it into the final article.
Some pages of his own about the project are:http://m.njit.edu/~bukiet/baseball/baseball.html
http://www.egrandslam.com/
Injuries. Did he take these into account? A lot of good teams have had lousy seasons due to players being hurt for long periods of time. MAYBE if every member of every team was able to play a full schedule of 162 games...
i onBill James' Pythagorean expectation says that each team should play .500 ball; 81 wins and 81 losses. But one team could win a lot of close games and lose a couple dozen blowouts, finish with 90+ wins. Another could lose a bunch of close games and win a couple dozen blowouts, ending up with only 70 wins.
Performances. If every player played consistently every day, but some guys go on hot streaks and get moved up in the batting order. Some guys go cold and get bumped down, or even worse, sent to the minors. MAYBE if the 25-man rosters stayed constant for the entire season.
Luck. Three teams each score 750 runs over the course of a season. Each one also allows 750 runs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_expectat
Generally one needs a Ph.D in math to be a "mathematician".
Le français vous intéresse?
For the last 3 years, the Yankees are 61-37 against the AL Central as a whole, and the Sox are 56-45. For those years, the standings of the top 4 teams from the East and Central are as follows:
2006:
NYY 97-65
MIN 96-66
DET 95-67
CWS 90-72
2005:
CWS 99-63
NYY 95-67
BOS 95-67
CLE 93-69
2004:
NYY 101-61
BOS 98-64
MIN 92-70
CWS 83-79
Only last year would even one of those two teams not have ended up in a MINIMUM of third place, and the Yankees would still have been firmly on top. And frankly, a lot of the stars had to align for the standings to end up so well in the Central's favor last year. If you base your argument SOLELY on the 2006 results, and completely ignore any other factors, you might be able to make half a case, but it would be a weak one.