Statistics In Sports

Statistics is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. It is applicable to a wide variety of academic disciplines, from the physical and social sciences to the humanities. Statistics are also used for making informed decisions Ð'- and misused for other reasons Ð'- in all areas of business and government. Statistical methods can be used to summarize or describe a collection of data; this is called descriptive statistics. In addition, patterns in the data may be modeled in a way that accounts for randomness and uncertainty in the observations, and then used to draw inferences about the process or population being studied; this is called inferential statistics. Both descriptive and inferential statistics comprise applied statistics. There is also a discipline called mathematical statistics, which is concerned with the theoretical basis of the subject. Stats or statistics are used in all sports as well as in all aspects of life. Statistics is used in sports to measure a players ability in specific areas of the game. Stats or statistics are used in all sports.

Statistical analysis is best organized into two subsets: descriptive statistics and inference statistics. Descriptive statistics is used to summarize the data by organizing it graphically or numerically. Charts and graphs are used in descriptive statistics to show variation in the sample, or a chosen subset of the population being observed. An example of this in sports is in baseball a chart shows the percentage or times or amount of times a ball is hit. Numerically organized data is often displayed as standard deviation or as a mean. A mean is simply an average, while standard deviation is the measure of statistical dispersion, or how the information gathered relates to the mean of the data. One stat that uses mean is earned run average (ERA). ERA is the mean of earned runs given up by a pitcher per nine innings pitched. It is determined by multiplying the number of earned runs allowed by nine and dividing by the number of innings pitched. Statistical dispersion is measured by a number system. The measure would be zero, if all the data were the same. As the data varies, the measurement number increases. There are two purposes to organizing this data. The first is to show how different units seem similar, by choosing the proper statistic, or measurement. This is called central tendency. The second is to choose another statistic that shows how they differ. This is known as statistical variability. The most commonly used statistics are the mean (average), median (middle or half), and mode (most frequent data). After the data is collected, classified, summarized, and presented, then it is possible to move on to inferential statistics if there is enough data to draw a conclusion.

Statistical inference is the second part of statistics. Statistical inference uses the data that was gathered and organized by descriptive statistics in order to make a logical inference or conclusion. There are two branches of inferential statistics: Bayesian inference and frequency probability. Bayesian inference uses the scientific method to increase the probability that a hypothesis or theorem might be true by presenting factual information. By collecting evidence, the credibility of a hypothesis can change greatly. Evidence can be collected to prove, or disprove the hypothesis. A hypothesis that has been supported by enough evidence should be accepted as true, and a hypothesis that has been rejected by enough evidence should be rejected as false, according to Bayesian inference. The second branch, frequency probability, defines the probability of an event as the limit of its frequency, or the number of times that even will occur in a given experiment. All of the possible outcomes of the experiment are called the sample space, while one specific outcome is known as an event. This form of probability is commonly used today in casinos, sports betting, and other forms of gambling.

Statistics in sports provides information to the players, coaches, viewers, gamblers, and analysts. Stats help players learn other players tendencies such as where the ball will be hit, percentage of times a certain pitch is thrown, or avg. against a lefty or right pitcher. Stats help coaches learn more about their players and what needs to be improved upon in that player. An example of that is if a coach sees that a players dropped pass percentage is low they would want to work on catching the ball. Statistics help viewers and gamblers so that they can see the probability of something happening or what a certain player is good