Statistics and Baseball

Today we talked about great home run hitters. We started with Babe Ruth, arguably the greatest baseball player hitter in history. Here are some of the class highlights:

• We watched part of a Ken Burns documentary on the life of Babe Ruth. He had a very interesting life, chewing tobacco and drinking as a young kid, living in a "boarding school" until age 19, and then enjoying a colorful life as big leaguer. Despite his loud and obnoxious behavior, Ruth was a very popular figure and changed the way baseball was played.
• We explored the season slugging percentages for Ruth. A five-number summary (LO, QL, M, QU, HI) was introduced that provides simple measures of center and spread.
• It is interesting to graph Ruth's slugging percentages against year. There is an interesting outlier in the year 1925 -- the low value can be attributed to the "bellyache heard around the world."
• In the computer lab, we got introduced to the use of Fathom. We explored the season slugging percentages for Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds. Both hitters had interesting career trajectories. Aaron was notable for his consistency. Bonds' trajectory, showed here, exhibits an unusual increase in SLG during the last part of his career. (This unusual career trajectory probably has an explanation that has come to light during the 2006 season.)