Baseball Research
You may have seen my research referenced by Evan Gattis (Atlanta Braves) in the June 10, 2013, edition of Sports Illustrated.
Back in 1994-1995, while in graduate school, I developed a pitch/hit charting software program called ChartMine. ChartMine was used by over 300 colleges, including one-third of Division 1 programs, and ESPN. As part of this effort, I wrote several white papers regarding baseball statistics and strategy. I still receive emails asking for this work, so I am posting a few of the papers below.
- On the Importance of Throwing Strikes. PDF
- STATS Inc, and the Fallacy of Batting Average by Count. PDF
- How well do you know baseball? PDF
- Batting Average by Count and Pitch Type. SABR Article. PDF
- Why it is so Hard to Hit 400. SABR Article. PDF
- Teaching Decision Making with Baseball Examples. PDF
- On the Decision to Take a Pitch. PDF
If you are interested in decision making and baseball, watch this webinar I gave as part of Stanford’s Strategic Decision and Risk Management program.
The Weather Channel Research
Do you watch The Weather Channel and wonder how accurate their precipitation forecasts are? This paper summarizes my study of over 13 million precipitation forecasts that was featured in Nate Silver’s book The Signal and the Noise. You can use the tables I include below to convert The Weather Channel’s precipitation forecasts into observed frequencies. To use the tables you simply look up the forecasted probability of precipitation (PoP) given by The Weather Channel on the horizontal axis and then read down the rows to adjust for the length of forecast. For example, a 5-day lead-time is a forecast for 5 days from today.
Central (KY, IL, IN, MO, OH, TN, and WV): Table
East North Central (IA, MI, MN, and WI): Table
Northeast (CT, DE, ME, MD, MA, NH, NJ, and NY): Table
South (AK, LA, KS, MS, OK, and TX): Table
Southeast (AL, FL, GA, NC, SC, and VA): Table
Southwest (AZ, CO, NM, and UT): Table
West (CA and NV): Table
West North Central (MT, NE, ND, SD, and WY): Table