Mathletics
Authors: Wayne L. Winston
Published: 2009, Princeton University Press, New Jersey
ISBN: 978-0-691-15458-9
About the Authors
Wayne L Winston is an Academic who has worked for many major corporate organisations and sports organisations such as the Dallas Mavericks. He has a Masters in Mathmatics from MIT in 1971 and PhD from Yale in Operations Research. He is a Professor Emeritus of Decision and Information Systems at the Kelley School.
Who is it for?
This book is a book for gamblers, sports analysts and managers. I don’t think coaches would take a lot away from it. There is plenty of stuff to play around with but mainly there is a lot of stuff to play around with in terms of judging teams and predictive maths.
American sports fans may also generally find it interesting.
What is it about?
This book sequences through 4 main sections; Baseball, Football (American), Basketball and finally gambling.
Each section has it’s own interesting sections and provides mathematic solutions to commonly discussed problems and discussions in those sports.
The book links to spreadsheets that you can adjust for your own sport and play around with from there.
What did I take from it?
I took a fair few ideas from “Baseball’s Pythagorus’ Theorem” to win probability in the NFL.
Ideas I generally thought complicated were actually quite easy to integrate using a simplified method that Winston had described.
Playing around with some live win probabilities. Based off follower average score predictions on Instagram. Seems a little volatile but interesting nonetheless. #NZLvIRE #AUSvENG #ARGvSCO pic.twitter.com/mi0uXCioUe
— BF Sports Analysis (@bfsportanalysis) July 10, 2022
Should I buy it?
It shouldn’t be your first book in sports analysis unless you are very comfortable with mathematics.
But it is an excellent book and the more complex mathematic speak is more towards the front of the book and becomes easier for a reader as they go on to understand the concepts.
