Sport Stats and Teacher Stats
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that
counts can be counted.” Attributed to Albert Einstein
I just saw the film “Moneyball” which is about General Manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) whose Oakland Athletics shocked the baseball world in 2002 by nearly beating the New York Yankees in the American League playoffs. Why “shocked?” Because Beane had a player payroll costing $41 million and the Yankees laid out $126 million yet both won 103 games that season.
According to the book of the same name published in 2003, Beane upended the conventional wisdom of evaluating players and fielded a team of under-rated athletes that won 20 straight games in the 2002 season (an American League record) before meeting the Yankees in the playoffs.
How did he do it? Among baseball insiders, the conventional wisdom was to evaluate players for their potential by making subjective judgments that included numbers. For pitchers their throwing speed, repertoire of pitches,