Real-Life Math
Sometimes it seems like there is a statistic calculated for every
move a baseball player makes on the field. Baseball is obsessed with numbers.
There are entire books that are simply statistics about baseball players.
"As
a former PE teacher, I incorporated math concepts into our baseball unit,"
says Justine Siegal. She is the founder and executive coach of a Massachusetts-based
organization that offers baseball instruction for men and women.
"Math
is rampant throughout baseball. I can give you a multiple regression equation
that will likely predict what kind of hitting year a player will have based
on what the player has done in the past. Scouts, agents and coaches can use
this information. One cool job is to become a baseball statician."
"There
is a lot of math in baseball," agrees Adam Morissette, media relations coordinator
of a baseball organization. "The sport is renowned for having various statistics
which determine how well a player is performing, there are mathematical formulas
used to calculate batting averages (AVG), on-base percentages (OBP) for batters,
and earned run averages (ERA) and walks plus hits per innings pitched (WHIP)
for pitchers."
You're a strong hitter on a professional
baseball team. You're partway through the season and wonder how you're measuring
up to last year's statistics, so you calculate your batting average.
A batting average measures how many hits a player would make out of
1,000 bats, and is calculated by dividing the number of hits by the number
of times he is up to bat.
Last year you hit 73 out of the 243 times
you went up to bat. What's your batting average?
This year you have
hit 42 out of 155 times that you've been up to bat. What's your batting average
this year?
Your teammate, Jose, asks you to calculate his fielding percentage.
To calculate this percentage, divide the total number of assists and putouts
a fielder makes by the total number of putouts, assists and errors a fielder
makes.
Jose's field stats:
108 putouts
14 assists
2 errors