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Hello Member,
Put a little spring in your step with this month's copy of the Parameter...
Almost springtime in Chicago!
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Putting the Stats in Sports |
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The summer sports season is ramping up, and there's no finer way to get involved than to attend the
SPRING STATISTICS CONFERENCE
Friday, May 6, 2011
9:00 AM-4:30 PM
Leo Burnett offices
35 W. Wacker Dr.
Chicago, IL 60601
(Corner of Wacker and Dearborn)
Here's the lineup...
Session One:
The first session will highlight three topics: the MLB Hall of Fame scoring system (JAWS), Pythagorean records (The Hit List), and the expansion of Defense Independent Pitching Statistics into the mainstream. Jay Jaffe will discuss their statistical underpinnings and the way such truths make their way into the mainstream.
Speaker:
Jay Jaffe, Baseball Prospectus and Futility Infielder
Jay Jaffe is the founder of the 10-year-old Futility Infielder website (www.futilityinfielder.com), one of the oldest baseball blogs. In addition to covering the annual Hall of Fame ballot for Baseball Prospectus since 2004, he writes the weekly Prospectus Hit List and Prospectus Hit and Run, and began covering the Yankees for the YES Network's Pinstriped Bible in the summer of 2010. In recent years he's contributed work to six Baseball Prospectus annuals as well as their It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over and Mind Game books as well as Will Carroll's The Juice, and the Fantasy Baseball Index annual. A graduate of Brown University, he once came in third in the famous Milwaukee Brewers sausage race, and in December 2010 was elected to become a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
The first session will highlight three topics: the MLB Hall of Fame scoring system (JAWS), Pythagorean records (The Hit List), and the expansion of Defense Independent Pitching Statistics into the mainstream. Jay Jaffe will discuss their statistical underpinnings and the way such truths make their way into the mainstream. Jay Jaffe is the founder of the 10-year-old Futility Infielder website (www.futilityinfielder.com), one of the oldest baseball blogs. In addition to covering the annual Hall of Fame ballot for Baseball Prospectus since 2004, he writes the weekly Prospectus Hit List and Prospectus Hit and Run, and began covering the Yankees for the YES Network's Pinstriped Bible in the summer of 2010. In recent years he's contributed work to six Baseball Prospectus annuals as well as their It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over and Mind Game books as well as Will Carroll's The Juice, and the Fantasy Baseball Index annual. A graduate of Brown University, he once came in third in the famous Milwaukee Brewers sausage race, and in December 2010 was elected to become a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
The first session will highlight three topics: the MLB Hall of Fame scoring system (JAWS), Pythagorean records (The Hit List), and the expansion of Defense Independent Pitching Statistics into the mainstream. Jay Jaffe will discuss their statistical underpinnings and the way such truths make their way into the mainstream. Jay Jaffe is the founder of the 10-year-old Futility Infielder website (www.futilityinfielder.com), one of the oldest baseball blogs. In addition to covering the annual Hall of Fame ballot for Baseball Prospectus since 2004, he writes the weekly Prospectus Hit List and Prospectus Hit and Run, and began covering the Yankees for the YES Network's Pinstriped Bible in the summer of 2010. In recent years he's contributed work to six Baseball Prospectus annuals as well as their It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over and Mind Game books as well as Will Carroll's The Juice, and the Fantasy Baseball Index annual. A graduate of Brown University, he once came in third in the famous Milwaukee Brewers sausage race, and in December 2010 was elected to become a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
Session Two:
The field of sports analytics is growing at a fast pace. Teams in a variety of sports have employed the tools of sports analytics to gain a competitive edge in many areas such as in game strategy, player projections, salary cap management, and player development. Sports analytics is essentially a new technology evolving in professional sports, and as such, faces barriers that are both unique to sports and common across all industries. As the tools evolve, many of the teams that embrace the new technology are shown to benefit significantly through more informed decision making that has resulted in more wins.
Speaker:
Ben Alamar, Editor for Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports and Oklahoma City Thunder NBA Franchise
Benjamin Alamar, PhD: Professor Alamar is the founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sport, a professor of sports management at Menlo College and the Director of Basketball Analytics and Research for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA. He has published academic research in football, basketball and baseball, has presented sports related work at the annual conventions of the Society for American Baseball Research, the American Statistical Society and the New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports. Additionally he has consulted for teams in the NBA and NFL and provided statistical analysis for author Michael Lewis for his recent book The Blind Side. Professor Alamar is also an award winning economist who has worked academically and professionally in intellectual property valuation, public finance and public health. He received his PhD in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2001.
Session Three:
The publication of Moneyball (in 2003) was certainly not the first attempt to put sports, statistics and economics under one roof, or between two covers. But it generated a vast amount of popular interest among intelligent lay readers, various media, and academic scholars -- economists, statisticians, law and business faculty, and other social scientists - in the application of models and measurement, and strategic decision-making, to winning ball games and making money at it. Currently "The Economics of Sports" is taught at many universities across the country and abroad. In our time together we will look at the hits, runs and errors of the past decade, and the past 50 years, to examine where the intersection of these three fields has advanced the ball, where it comes up short of the goal line or net, and where it's likely "headed" - pun intended - in the years ahead.
Speaker:
Allen Sanderson, Department of Economics, The University of Chicago
Allen Sanderson is a senior lecturer in economics. He came to Chicago from Princeton in 1984; served eight years as associate provost of the University; and has also been a senior research scientist at NORC. In addition to his popular sequence in introductory economics, Economics 198 and 199, he teaches a course and does research on the economics of sports. He is also the organizer of a team-taught multidisciplinary course, "Sport, Society and Science." In 1998 he was a recipient of the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Mr. Sanderson is an oft-cited authority on sports economics issues, a contributor to op-ed pages on sports and non-sports topics in newspapers around the country and a frequent guest on national and Chicago-area television and radio programs. Recent speaking engagements include lectures in Osaka, Japan; Beijing, China; Paris, France; the Economic Club of Chicago (with baseball commissioner Bud Selig); and at University of Chicago alumni clubs in the U.S., Canada and France. His most recent professional journal article is on the economic impact of colleges and universities on their communities.
Session Four:
Aaron Schatz will talk about the development of advanced football statistics, and the difficulties that outsiders have getting information about the National Football League as well as college football.
Speaker:
Aaron Schatz, Football Outsiders and ESPN Columnist
Aaron Schatz is the creator and editor-in-chief of FootballOutsiders.com and the lead writer of the Football Outsiders Almanac book series. His innovative statistical methods and analysis of NFL play-by-play led the New York Times Magazine to call him "the Bill James of football." He is a regular contributor to NFL coverage on ESPN.com as well as in ESPN the Magazine, and has written in the past for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Republic Online, and Slate.com. He has also done custom research for a number of NFL teams. He has a BA in Economics from Brown University and lives in Framingham, Massachusetts with his wife, Kathryn, and daughter, Mirinae.
Costs:
- CCASA Members: $145
- Non-members: $195
- Students: $95
To register for the conference, please go to
http://www.123signup.com/calendar?Org=chicagoasa
To register for the conference, please go to
To register for the conference, please go to
Please email questions to John VanderPloeg:
john.vanderploeg@arcww.com
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CCASA New Board Members 2011-2012 |
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Presidents and VP's
President:
Borko D. Jovanovic, Northwestern University
Past-President:
Michael R. Wise, Astellas
President-Elect:
Linda Burtch, Burtch Works
VP Communications:
Adam McElhinney, Enova Financial
VP Conferences:
John Vander Ploeg, ARC Worldwide, an affiliate of Leo Burnett
VP Luncheons:
Gerald Funk, Loyola University
VP Membership:
Richard Smiley, NCSBN
VP Publicity:
Ed Wygonik, Roosevelt University
VP Secretary:
Mary Kwasny, Northwestern University
VP Treasurer:
Dan Hayes, Trans Union
VP Workshops:
Tony Babinec, AB Analytics
Directors at Large
George Bateman, University of Chicago
Linda Clark, LMC Consulting
Jerry Enenstein, JEResearch
Edward Hirschland, The Landhart Corporation
Kathy Morrissey, Strategy 2 Market Inc
Lou Fogg, Rush University
Mark S. Richards, ISO Innovative Analytics
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Survey Says! |
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Roosevelt University students pursuing their Master's degrees in Industrial/Organizational Psychology need your input! Please help by taking a short survey about your Chicago Chapter ASA membership experience, and future expectations. The findings will be used for scholarly purposes by the research team, and by the CCASA in the hopes that we can improve our chapter.
Follow this link to participate: www.kwiksurveys.com?s=INMHNO_e1387e3d
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Florence Nightingale: Nurse...and Statistician? |
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Florence Nightingale, iconic nurse credited with treating (and saving) British soldiers in the Vicotoria era did so not only with chicken soup, but with statistics.
After seeing the devestating state of British hospitals during the Crimean War, Nightingale returned home determined to turn around the British military medical system. Knowing she had to approach the issue with more than emotional impressions, she partnered with William Farr, inventor of the field of medical statistics. Together they compiled the necessary data to approach Queen Victoria with plan facts-- and actionable insights.
Florence Nightingale developed a new way of presenting her findings, preparing a coxcomb graph, that succeeded in giving her plight a striking visual component. Together with the statistics compiled, the graph was a forceful enough tool to insight enormous change.
Nightingale's experience is proof positive of the power of statistics to initiate reform.
For more detail, please click here.
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A Statistical Report Card |
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Teachers grade your children's work. That grade is intended to indicate his or her comprehension and ability to synthesize the subject at hand, and ultimately impacts their future. It is a deciding factor in determining their class progression, and ultimately, their collegiate options.
The question then is, who 'grades' them? Why the school district's resident statiscian, of course!
The Houson Independent School District recently hired Bill Sanders of the SAS Institute in Cary, North Carolina to analyze the district's performance bonus system. Sanders uses a formula to understand students' progress rates in order to determine the teachers' effectiveness.
For more information on his work, and to read an interview he gave to the Houston Chronicle, please click here.
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About the Parameter |
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PARAMETER, newsletter of the Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association, is published 10 times a year as a service to its members. To submit material for publication, contact the Editor, Linda Burtch, email: lburtch@burtchworks.com
PARAMETER provides a job listing service by publishing Positions Available and Positions Wanted, the latter being free to Chapter members. Companies may list positions for $75. Contact the Editor for more information.
For additional information about Chicago Chapter ASA, please visit us on the web at: www.ChicagoASA.org.
Also, visit the National ASA web site www.amstat.org.
Email change of address to: smileyr@georgetown.edu
©CCASA 2009
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