Mathletics

How to use math to improve performance and predict outcomes in professional sports Mathletics reveals the mathematical methods top coaches and managers use to evaluate players and improve team performance, and gives math enthusiasts the practical skills they need to enhance their understanding and enjoyment of their favorite sports—and maybe even gain the outside edge to winning bets. This second edition features new data, new players and teams, and new chapters on soccer, e-sports, golf, volleyball, gambling Calcuttas, analysis of camera data, Bayesian inference, ridge regression, and other statistical techniques. 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 more.

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.

For Year 5

For Year 4

"This practical teachers' guide will help you to unlock the enormous potential of new technology in order to enhance pupils' learning, particularly for young people with additional needs ... With 50 illustrated case studies and 20 starter activities, this practical resource will help you to introduce new technology into the inclusive classroom. It has been specifically designed to help develop your pupils' key skills, such as problem solving, developing concepts and communicating to different audiences."--Provided by publisher.

This book lays out the theoretical groundwork for personalized search and reputation management, both on the Web and in peer-to-peer and social networks. Representing much of the foundational research in this field, the book develops scalable algorithms that exploit the graphlike properties underlying personalized search and reputation management, and delves into realistic scenarios regarding Web-scale data. Sep Kamvar focuses on eigenvector-based techniques in Web search, introducing a personalized variant of Google's PageRank algorithm, and he outlines algorithms--such as the now-famous quadratic extrapolation technique--that speed up computation, making personalized PageRank feasible. Kamvar suggests that Power Method-related techniques ultimately should be the basis for improving the PageRank algorithm, and he presents algorithms that exploit the convergence behavior of individual components of the PageRank vector. Kamvar then extends the ideas of reputation management and personalized search to distributed networks like peer-to-peer and social networks. He highlights locality and computational considerations related to the structure of the network, and considers such unique issues as malicious peers. He describes the EigenTrust algorithm and applies various PageRank concepts to P2P settings. Discussion chapters summarizing results conclude the book's two main sections. Clear and thorough, this book provides an authoritative look at central innovations in search for all of those interested in the subject.

In Scorecasting, University of Chicago behavioral economist Tobias Moskowitz teams up with veteran Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim to overturn some of the most cherished truisms of sports, and reveal the hidden forces that shape how basketball, baseball, football, and hockey games are played, won and lost. Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economists such as bestselling author Richard Thaler, the authors look at: the influence home-field advantage has on the outcomes of games in all sports and why it exists; the surprising truth about the universally accepted axiom that defense wins championships; the subtle biases that umpires exhibit in calling balls and strikes in key situations; the unintended consequences of referees' tendencies in every sport to "swallow the whistle," and more. Among the insights that Scorecasting reveals: • Why Tiger Woods is prone to the same mistake in high-pressure putting situations that you and I are • Why professional teams routinely overvalue draft picks • The myth of momentum or the "hot hand" in sports, and why so many fans, coaches, and broadcasters fervently subscribe to it • Why NFL coaches rarely go for a first down on fourth-down situations--even when their reluctance to do so reduces their chances of winning. In an engaging narrative that takes us from the putting greens of Augusta to the grid iron of a small parochial high school in Arkansas, Scorecasting will forever change how you view the game, whatever your favorite sport might be.

In this revolutionary book, a renowned computer scientist explains the importance of teaching children the basics of computing and how it can prepare them to succeed in the ever-evolving tech world. Computers have completely changed the way we teach children. We have Mindstorms to thank for that. In this book, pioneering computer scientist Seymour Papert uses the invention of LOGO, the first child-friendly programming language, to make the case for the value of teaching children with computers. Papert argues that children are more than capable of mastering computers, and that teaching computational processes like de-bugging in the classroom can change the way we learn everything else. He also shows that schools saturated with technology can actually improve socialization and interaction among students and between students and teachers. Technology changes every day, but the basic ways that computers can help us learn remain. For thousands of teachers and parents who have sought creative ways to help children learn with computers, Mindstorms is their bible.

One of the greatest changes in the sports world in the past 20 years has been the use of mathematical methods to analyze performances, recognize trends and patterns, and predict results. Analytic Methods in Sports: Using Mathematics and Statistics to Understand Data from Baseball, Football, Basketball, and Other Sports, Second Edition provides a concise yet thorough introduction to the analytic and statistical methods that are useful in studying sports. The book gives you all the tools necessary to answer key questions in sports analysis. It explains how to apply the methods to sports data and interpret the results, demonstrating that the analysis of sports data is often different from standard statistical analyses. The book integrates a large number of motivating sports examples throughout and offers guidance on computation and suggestions for further reading in each chapter. Features Covers numerous statistical procedures for analyzing data based on sports results Presents fundamental methods for describing and summarizing data Describes aspects of probability theory and basic statistical concepts that are necessary to understand and deal with the randomness inherent in sports data Explains the statistical reasoning underlying the methods Illustrates the methods using real data drawn from a wide variety of sports Offers many of the datasets on the author’s website, enabling you to replicate the analyses or conduct related analyses New to the Second Edition R code included for all calculations A new chapter discussing several more advanced methods, such as binary response models, random effects, multilevel models, spline methods, and principal components analysis, and more Exercises added to the end of each chapter, to enable use for courses and self-study

Data and analytics have the potential to provide sports organizations with a competitive advantage both on and off the field. Yet even as the use of analytics in sports has become commonplace, teams regularly find themselves making big investments without significant payoff. This book is a practical, nontechnical guide to incorporating sports data into decision making, giving leaders the knowledge they need to maximize their organization’s investment in analytics. Benjamin C. Alamar—a leading expert who has built high-performing analytics groups—surveys the current state of the use of data in sports, including both specifics around the tools and how to deploy them most effectively. Sports Analytics offers a clear, easily digestible overview of data management, statistical models, and information systems and a detailed understanding of their vast possibilities. It walks readers through the essentials of understanding the value of different types of data and strategies for building and managing an analytics team. Throughout, Alamar illustrates the value of analytics with real-world examples and case studies from both the sports and business sides. Sports Analytics has guided a range of sports professionals to success since its original publication in 2013. This second edition adds examples and strategies that focus on using data on the business side of a sports organization, provides concrete strategies for incorporating different types of data into decision making, and updates all discussions for the rapid technological developments of the last decade.