Skip to Content
Stumbling On Wins in Basketball: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports
book

Stumbling On Wins in Basketball: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports

by Martin B. Schmidt, David J. Berri
April 2010
Intermediate to advanced
64 pages
3h 17m
English
Pearson
Content preview from Stumbling On Wins in Basketball: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports

3. The Search for Useful Stats

Why do teams track statistics in the first place? The primary purpose is to separate a player from his team. We know at the end of a contest who won. What we don’t know is which players were responsible for a team’s success (or failure).

The history of baseball statistics begins in the 19th century.1 Eventually, the idea of tracking numbers carried over to other sports, and today sports fans are presented with a dizzying array of statistics. All these numbers are supposed to tell us which players are “helping” or “hurting.” For that to happen, though, one has to identify which numbers are “useful.”

Identifying the Most “Useful” Numbers

Table 3.1 reveals the plus-minus statistic in both hockey and basketball is ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Stumbling On Wins in Football: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports

Stumbling On Wins in Football: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports

David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt
How to Develop a Great Digital Strategy

How to Develop a Great Digital Strategy

Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia M. Beath, Ina M. Sebastian

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780132120999