My son, Justin, has started a sports analytics blog that he calls Turribul, which is a reverential reference to comments made about sports analytics by the popular, retired basketball player, Charles Barkley. Justin has a Ph.D. in economics, and he is brilliant with numbers. He is also a big sports fan. The combination of these two interests led him to a fascination with how the reams of data available for sports can be used to provide a fact-based alternative to all the speculation that goes on among enthusiastic sports fans and pundits about the games they love to watch and discuss.
Even if you’re only a casual watcher of sports, like me, you will appreciate what is revealed when hard data and number-crunching are applied to the world around us. This makes Justin’s blog an especially refreshing return to critical thinking at a time when our culture is being rocked by unsubstantiated conspiracies and alternative versions of reality.
The first blog post deals with the concept of “win expectancy,” and the second post looks at the real value of a home run in baseball.
If you consider yourself to be a “thinking” sports fan, take a look at Turribul.
Monte