In today's class, we talked about the distinction between descriptive and predictive statistics. We heard the story of how Grady Little failed to pull The Pedro during a 2003 playoff game, and was subsequently canned as the Sox's skipper for not heeding the warning of pitch count statistics. In a less tragic scenario, the Penn State women's volleyball team has a fairly ridiculous winning streak of 102 straight matches going. The secret? Coach Russ Rose's notebooks....of volleyball statistics. Rose, who did his master's thesis on volleyball statistics, doesn't just record the typical volleyball numbers that professional statisticians collect. He makes connections between what he sees (or doesn't see) and outcomes. "Passing predicts the level of play. Hitting and blocking are most correlated with winning." It's a low-tech solution to the problem--but the fundamentals are the same in terms of the predictive power of numbers and how it can be used to drive strategic decisions. For more on Rose, the team, and the streak:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/sports/08volleyball.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
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Nice find Christina!I actually watched their last NCAA final against Texas. It was amazing that they came back from 2 sets down. I like to think that their feat was a little more than statistics :)
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