How Baseball Managers Use Math

Explains the importance of statistics, percentages and other mathematical calculations to managing a winning baseball team.

"Mathletics shows readers how to use simple mathematics to analyze a range of statistical and probability-related questions in professional baseball, basketball, football, soccer, lacrosse, and golf, and in sports gambling. The authors describe the mathematical methods that top coaches and managers use to evaluate players and improve team performance, and give math enthusiasts the practical tools they need to enhance their understanding and enjoyment of their favorite sports - and maybe even gain the outside edge to winning bets. Mathletics blends fun and challenging math problems with sports stories of actual games, teams, and players, along with personal anecdotes from Winston's work as a sports consultant. The book includes easy-to-read tables and illustrations to illuminate the techniques and ideas presented, and all the necessary mathematical concepts - such as arithmetic, basic statistics and probability, and Monte Carlo simulations - are fully explained in the examples. The revised edition will include about 75 pages of revised text and roughly 40 new figures. The book will include updates to the data and inclusion of more recent players and teams throughout all the chapters. It will also include new chapters on soccer, lacrosse, and golf, as well as new findings on regression, game theory, and optimization"--Publisher's description.

How math can be used to improve performance and predict outcomes in professional sports Mathletics is a remarkably entertaining book that shows readers how to use simple mathematics to analyze a range of statistical and probability-related questions in professional baseball, basketball, and football, and in sports gambling. How does professional baseball evaluate hitters? Is a singles hitter like Wade Boggs more valuable than a power hitter like David Ortiz? Should NFL teams pass or run more often on first downs? Could professional basketball have used statistics to expose the crooked referee Tim Donaghy? Does money buy performance in professional sports? In Mathletics, Wayne Winston describes the mathematical methods that top coaches and managers use to evaluate players and improve team performance, and gives math enthusiasts the practical tools they need to enhance their understanding and enjoyment of their favorite sports—and maybe even gain the outside edge to winning bets. Mathletics blends fun math problems with sports stories of actual games, teams, and players, along with personal anecdotes from Winston's work as a sports consultant. Winston uses easy-to-read tables and illustrations to illuminate the techniques and ideas he presents, and all the necessary math concepts—such as arithmetic, basic statistics and probability, and Monte Carlo simulations—are fully explained in the examples. After reading Mathletics, you will understand why baseball teams should almost never bunt, why football overtime systems are unfair, why points, rebounds, and assists aren't enough to determine who's the NBA's best player—and much, much more. In a new epilogue, Winston discusses the stats and numerical analysis behind some recent sporting events, such as how the Dallas Mavericks used analytics to become the 2011 NBA champions.

Grounded in theory and best-practices research, this practical text provides teachers with 40 strategies for using fiction and non-fiction trade books to teach in five key content areas: language arts and reading, social studies, mathematics, science, and the arts. Each strategy provides everything a teacher needs to get started: a classroom example that models the strategy, a research-based rationale, relevant content standards, suggested books, reader-response questions and prompts, assessment ideas, examples of how to adapt the strategy for different grade levels (K–2, 3–5, and 6–8), and ideas for differentiating instruction for English language learners and struggling students. Throughout the book, student work samples and classroom vignettes bring the content to life.

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Using the game of baseball, readers must employ addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to determine hitting averages, distance, and the strike count.

This book illustrates basic methods of data analysis and probability models by means of baseball statistics collected on players and teams. The idea of the book is to describe statistical thinking in a context that will be familiar and interesting to students. The second edition of Teaching Statistics follows the same structure as the first edition, where the case studies and exercises have been replaced by modern players and teams, and the new types of baseball data from the PitchFX system and fangraphs.com are incorporated into the text.

Discover how the rules of math are at work when a basketball drops into a net and when creating a piece of art. Full-color photographs and related age-appropriate math questions engage young readers and give real world applications to mathematics.