A Mathematician at the Ballpark: Odds and Probabilities for Baseball Fans [Hardcover]

Ken Ross (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 21, 2004

Here is a perfect introduction to the ideas of probability that baseball fans will love. Books on baseball give statistics and use language such as "odds," "likely" and "no chance" without any explanation. Now professor of mathematics Ken Ross has written a guide to the beautiful and powerful science of probability for baseball fans who love statistics.In the last few years, revolutionaries armed with good old mathematics have changed baseball forever. Managers and coaches have refocused their attention on what statistics really measure and what they indicate about the probable performance of a player or a team. Now Ken Ross, himself a lifelong baseball fan, opens up the math behind Michael Lewis's bestseller Moneyball and shows how anyone can use probability to better understand the future of the game, in the next inning, or in the rest of the season, or in the rest of the World Series.See why the On Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage together are more meaningful than each is by itself (and why they are neither percentages nor averages). See how to calculate the probability that a seven-game series will go four, five, six or seven games. Learn how a mathematician adept in the arithmetic of probability can combine statistics to produce tailor-made analyses in answering questions about specific teams, players, and games. Filled with current and historical players, this is the first book that focuses on probability in baseball.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This math book for baseball fans is a hardcore yet accessible volume and serves as an entertaining introduction to the "sweet science" of probability. Ross (Elementary Analysis: The Theory of Calculus), a math professor at the University of Oregon, is baseball crazed—he swears that his early love of the game made him "comfortable with, and reasonably proficient at, elementary probability." He successfully sets out to introduce basic concepts and use them "to explain some results that have interesting applications for baseball." A chapter titled "Will the Yankees Win if Steinbrenner Is Gone?" is a delightful introduction to the concept of conditional probabilities. In "Who's the Best Hitter," he presents a fascinating look at how statistical measurements of a batter's offensive contribution, including "Slugging Percentage" and "On-Base Plus Slugging," show how two outstanding young outfielders, Yankee Hideki Matsui and Mariner Ichiro Suzuki, had "amazingly close" 2003 seasons offensively, although Ichiro was widely thought to have had a substantially better season than Matsui. And in "What Would Pete Rose Do?" Ross cleverly examines the concept of "double or nothing" and statistically proves that no preplanned strategy can make a losing situation into a winning one. Overall, Ross's book lovingly supports his assertion that "[p]robability is a wonderful window into the workings of baseball, gambling, and, sometimes it seems to me, life itself."
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Review

The ultimate math book for baseball fans. (Keith Devlin, Stanford University, and “The Math Guy” on NPR) --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Pi Press (July 21, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131479903
• ISBN-13: 978-0131479906
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Handy guide to *using* baseball statistics, August 17, 2004

By 

M. Schaefer - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Mathematician at the Ballpark: Odds and Probabilities for Baseball Fans (Hardcover)

Nowhere does one find more recorded statistical data than in and around baseball. Seemingly everything gets measured and recorded. I found this delightful book last week at a mathematics conference and looked through it because of its combination of a chatty style and no shyness about describing the mathematics of probabilities and odds computations. So I bought the book -- and I found myself reading it through in a sitting!

I have read several other popularizations of statistics as applied to baseball, but I've not seen any with the clarity and focused precision Ken Ross has lovingly put into this book. Precisely because baseball has evolved into such a rich combination of strategy and tactics, Ross knows from his teaching experience that novices need to build up a good understanding of less complex applications of probability theory prior to looking at direct applications to the richness of baseball. In this book, he has repeatedly achieved a fine balance of showing the theory, its application to a gambling application, and then to a related baseball context. (Probablility theory originated in work done by Blaise Pascal, Leonhard Euler and Joseph-Louis LaGrange specifically to compute gambling odds.) Starting with how to interpret averages to identify the best hitter of all time, Ross takes us through how to determine the probable behavior of a player or team and how to calculate the probability that a World Series willl go four, five, six or seven games. There are a lot of useful tools in this little book, and its strength is in the cheerful way it tells us how to learn to use them. All the tools that are needed to go on to deeper study (and application!) are provided, along with an annotated bibliography and pointers to SABR.

This book would make a splendid gift for a young boy or girl who likes mathematics and sports!

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Waste of Time and Misleading, April 9, 2005

By 

Norv - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Mathematician at the Ballpark: Odds and Probabilities for Baseball Fans (Hardcover)

This book is a waste of time. The title is VERY misleading (although the author is a mathematician and has gone to a ballpark), the chapter titles are very misleading and the book is 95% a textbook on teaching statistics and probability and 5% on their relationship to baseball. The subtitle of "odds and probabilities for baseball fans" should instead say "a textbook on odds and probabilities" (a good example is over 4 pages in the middle discussing statistics with respect to AIDS, after which he states "I apologize that the preceding examples aren't about baseball.") As one with an engineering degree you might expect that I found the book somewhat interesting and easy to read - not so. And as one who over the last 16 years has spent a week each summer traveling around the country with 2 buddies (seeing baseball games in every major league stadium and about 50 minor league stadium and traveled 32,000 miles in 48 states in the process) you could imagine my interest in the topic. But after the first 25 pages touch somewhat on baseball, the next 112 are mostly statistical/probability theory. On page 137 he says "Finally, I return to baseball!" That is true but the baseball content barely goes from 5% to 25% for the final 30 pages. Skip this book and watch a game instead. The cost is about the same and you'll remember the game.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The way to think about odds, August 17, 2004

By 

Charles Wright - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Mathematician at the Ballpark: Odds and Probabilities for Baseball Fans (Hardcover)

This book gives a gentle introduction to probability and odds. It's not a statistics text and doesn't pretend to be one, though the last chapter discusses some questions that can really only be answered using statistical methods. The author makes it clear that the models he discusses, and often illustrates with familiar examples, are only approximations to real-world baseball (if there is such a thing). There's genuine math, presented in an engagingly informal style at about a high school level. Not enough to guarantee the reader will win at sports gambling, but enough to give a feeling for how the pros might do it. Along the way, there are tidbits of baseball lore salted with the author's frankly personal opinions.