Physics – Physics and Society
Scientific paper
2008-04-07
Physics
Physics and Society
5 pages, 6 figures, 2-column revtex4 format; version 2: considerably expanded to 9 pages with 8 figures
Scientific paper
10.1140/epjb/e2008-00405-5
Can one understand the statistics of wins and losses of baseball teams? Are their consecutive-game winning and losing streaks self-reinforcing or can they be described statistically? We apply the Bradley-Terry model, which incorporates the heterogeneity of team strengths in a minimalist way, to answer these questions. Excellent agreement is found between the predictions of the Bradley-Terry model and the rank dependence of the average number team wins and losses in major-league baseball over the past century when the distribution of team strengths is taken to be uniformly distributed over a finite range. Using this uniform strength distribution, we also find very good agreement between model predictions and the observed distribution of consecutive-game team winning and losing streaks over the last half-century; however, the agreement is less good for the previous half-century. The behavior of the last half-century supports the hypothesis that long streaks are primarily statistical in origin with little self-reinforcing component. The data further show that the past half-century of baseball has been more competitive than the preceding half-century.
Redner Sid
Sire Clément
No associations
LandOfFree
Undestanding Baseball Team Standings and Streaks does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Undestanding Baseball Team Standings and Streaks, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Undestanding Baseball Team Standings and Streaks will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-729992