To align with the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference in Boston this weekend where ESPN is a major sponsor, ESPN The Magazine (sub required) showcases its Analytics Issue. The graphics summarizing the vast aount of athletic data are dazzling. It includes plenty of nuggets such as that of the baseball stat WAR or Wins above Replacement
“ In 2012 WAR took on a co-headlining role in the American League's MVP race. For Mike Trout supporters, WAR was simple and unimpeachable evidence of a perfect player performing at a nearly unprecedented level. For Miguel Cabrera supporters, WAR was the joyless and inscrutable tool of eggheads, trolls, all of us who never played the game. Cabrera vs. Trout was often reduced to a referendum on the value of data.”
and the impact of analytics on gambling on sports
“Like baseball after sabermetrics, like Wall Street in the 1970s, sports gambling over the past decade has undergone a quantitative revolution. Nearly every successful sports bettor in the world now uses some form of computer model to assist in the handicapping of sporting events. Like their brethren inside hedge funds, these gamblers are known as quants. Like the advanced trading systems operating on Wall Street, the models used by this technologically adroit breed of sports bettor are sometimes called black boxes. Their models (and their identities) are shrouded in secrecy. Their algorithms are proprietary. And with each passing year, their sophistication mounts. One veteran Las Vegas handicapper, who goes by the pseudonym Steve Fezzik, laments, “They’ve left me, and others like me, in the dark ages.” Bayesian methods, Monte Carlo methods, Markov chains, k-nearest neighbor algorithms, Chapman-Kolmogorov equations -- the key advances in statistical analysis, probability theory and predictive modeling have been marshaled toward the object of beating the bookies out of a dime. Their goal is nothing less than a sustainable edge.”
And as a nice bonus, the issue also has Michael Jordan reminiscing as he approaches 50.
Comments