Seminar Abstract

Monday, March 31, 2008 • 12:15 PM • Medium Conference Room, SFI

Sidney Redner Boston University

Understanding Baseball Team Standings and Streaks

Can one understand the statistics of wins and losses of baseball teams, and also their winning and losing streaks? Streaks are particularly appealing because popular discussion often suggests that long consecutive-game winning and losing streaks are self-reinforcing. We apply the Bradley-Terry model of competition, which incorporates the heterogeneity of team strengths in a simple way, to quantify the average win/loss record of any team as a function of its rank in major-league baseball over the past century. We also show that the distribution of winning and losing streaks decays exponentially with streak length at a rate that is determined by the spread in team strengths. More importantly, we present evidence that long winning and losing streaks have a purely statistical origin. The data further shows that the past half-century of baseball has been more competitive than the preceding half-century.

Host: C. C. Wood