Thursday, June 15, 2006
The Post-Game Show
Today we talked about the Mud Hens - Sky Chiefs game we watched last night. Here are some things we discussed.
- The Mud Hens lost primarily due to their weak hitting. We compared the Mud Hens and Sky Chiefs from two perspectives: their outcomes of plate appearances, such as SO, BB, H, and non-SO Outs, and the distribution of on-base hits, such as BB or HBP, singles, doubles, triples and home runs. It seemed that the Mud Hens had a lot of strikeouts, no walks, and few hits.
- The most significant plays were the clutch hits for the Sky Chiefs in the top of the 2nd inning.
- Was there luck in the game? There were several base hits that barely missed the infielders. There was a lucky bloop single by a hitter who was fooled by the pitch.
- A 95% confidence interval is helpful in learning about a batter's hitting probability on the basis of his batting average.
- The length of the interval depends on the sample size n and the confidence level.
- Confidence intervals are helpful in comparing batter abilities. If the intervals for the abilities of two hitters overlap, then we can't say that one batter is "better" than the other.