Mathematician Predicts Yankees To Dominate

anthemaniac writes "Computerized projections in sports are nothing new, but Bruce Bukiet of the New Jersey Institute of Technology has developed a model that seems to work pretty well. He projects how many games a Major League Baseball team will win by factoring in how each hitter ought to do against each pitcher in every game. His crystal ball says the Yankees will win 110 games this year, a pretty safe bet, many might agree. But he also projects all the divisional winners. He claims to be right more than wrong in five of the past six years."

110 wins?

[nebaz]

It's a safe bet that the Yankees will do well, they always seem to spend almost twice as much as most other teams on talent, not to mention luring good players from other teams away to crush competition. Having said that, they have always spent such money, and not done exceptionally well as of late. 110 wins is a lot, and not many tesms have accomplished that. Safe bet? Hardly.

Huh?

[Kuukai]

While Bukiet is the first to admit he's not a baseball expert, in five out of the past six years, he says that his model has produced more correct than incorrect predictions.

What? Does this even mean anything? If, say, he was right 51% percent of the time five years and wrong 90% of the time that other year, wouldn't that make his number of successes less than the expected number of successes from just guessing "win" or "lose"? I guess he's either really modest ("I don't like to brag, so I'll just say the accuracy is higher than 42%."), or a really, really bad statician.

amazing

[flynt]

Wait, you mean you can use past data to try to predict future events under certain assumptions, and sometimes it works? Someone should generalize this into some sort of academic discipline!

Re:I never understand these things...

[Burdell]

It is still trying to predict future results based on past performance. No matter what you predict, last year's Chipper Jones will never again face last year's Roger Clemens. Even if Clemens un-retires (again), he is not the same person, and neither is Chipper Jones. You also can't predict injuries, trades, managers' decisions, umpires' calls, weather, etc., all of which have an impact on the outcome of an individual game.

Climate Models?

[Matteo522]

So let me get this straight..

Climatologists use past data, computer models, and mathematical projections to support global warming and predict future results, and everyone calls it strong science based on facts. If the models are off, it's just a part of the scientific process, but the overall claim is still valid.

But if a statistician uses past data, computer models, and mathematical projections to predict baseball results, it's dismissed as some crack job's phony science. If the models are off, it's proof that he has no idea what he's doing and how these kinds of models don't work.

Am I missing something here?

Re:I never understand these things...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. We should stop trying to predict anything because we won't ever be 100% correct.

Re:Climate Models?

[zippthorne]

Yes, In the public experience, most fancy sports predictions have a history of being inaccurate. This is unlike the experience with climate models, which historically have also given us some predictions.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

You claim to be a mathematician with merely a BA in mathematics? Please, get off your high horse, son.

Re:Bah

[koreaman]

Generally one needs a Ph.D in math to be a "mathematician".

Re:Climate Models?

[Ibag]

What you are missing is that not all models are created equal, and not all things are as easy to model. It's all about variance. Consider the weather, for example. We can accurately predict what it will be for a day or two, and we have a decent guess for about a week, but beyond that, there is too much complexity and variability for us to say much (not to mention that weather appears to be a dynamical system, i.e., an example of chaos theory, which means that prediction is theoretically impossible). However, if I were to ask you what kind of weather I could expect this July, you could make some fairly accurate guess of "warm". All the small scale variations cancel out, and you can have a very good prediction of what the average temperature, or average rainfall, or average anything else will be over the next year, or 10.

For long term climate, we have a good idea how many of the processes involved work, and we can vary all the parameters to give ranges on the possible outcomes. While we can't use them to predict the rainfall in Boston on July 4, 2057, we can use them to say that the mean global temperature will be 3-5 degrees warmer that year (or some other similar statement).

Compare this to baseball. There aren't enough interactions for small variations not to throw everything off. Things like injuries, marital problems, drugs, rivalries, and weather could shift the outcomes of major games in ways and change the outcome in this model more severely than China switching to nuclear power would do in climate models. There is a better chance at predicting total numbers of runs or hits during the season, as the variation on things like that is smaller. Predicting the number of games won is almost as hopeless as predicting the outcome of an individual game, and if you could do that, you could hire people to post to slashdot for you.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling somebody who does not yet have a BA degree a mathematician is like ... (couldn't you have at least gotten a BS? Don't most people get a BS?)

Re:Red Sox suck!!

[zero1101]

I got news for you both. The Yankees AND the Red Sox suck. Put 'em both in the AL Central, and they're fighting for third place tops.

On what planet? Granted the Red Sox did poorly against the AL Central in 2006 (15-19), but the Yankees were 23-12 against the Central.

For the last 3 years, the Yankees are 61-37 against the AL Central as a whole, and the Sox are 56-45. For those years, the standings of the top 4 teams from the East and Central are as follows:
2006:
NYY 97-65
MIN 96-66
DET 95-67
CWS 90-72
2005:
CWS 99-63
NYY 95-67
BOS 95-67
CLE 93-69
2004:
NYY 101-61
BOS 98-64
MIN 92-70
CWS 83-79

Only last year would even one of those two teams not have ended up in a MINIMUM of third place, and the Yankees would still have been firmly on top. And frankly, a lot of the stars had to align for the standings to end up so well in the Central's favor last year. If you base your argument SOLELY on the 2006 results, and completely ignore any other factors, you might be able to make half a case, but it would be a weak one.