Teaching the fundamentals of statitics with sports data: Should teams walk or pitch to Barry Bonds?


Book: 
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference On Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-7), Salvador, Brazil.
Authors: 
Reiter, J. P.
Editors: 
Rossman, A., & Chance, B.
Category: 
Year: 
2006
Publisher: 
Voorburg, The Netherlands: International Statistical Institute.
URL: 
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications/17/5F3_REIT.pdf
Abstract: 

Sports data are commonly used to present topics from introductory statistics, such as exploratory data analysis and probability. They also can illustrate more subtle and complex statistical issues, such as selecting appropriate variables, making casual inferences from observational data, and specifying appropriate inferential populations. In this paper, I discuss how sports data can be used to engage students on such fundamental aspects of data analysis. I frame the discussion around the question posed in the title, a question which has generated much debate among baseball enthusiasts.

The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education