Lightsabermetrics: Summarizing Moneyball with Sketch to Stretch

Heather, Susan, and I decided to explore an article about baseball statistics this week. We used an article from Heather’s AP statistics class titled “Moneyball Shows the Power of Statistics.”

In October 2011, a month after Moneyball was released, The Minitab Blog published an article about sabermetrics. Sabermetrics is “a specialized type of data analysis that uses statistics to understand… baseball” (Rudy, 2011). The 2011 film, Moneyball, is about Oakland Athletics manager Billy Beane and how he used statistics to assemble and manage his baseball team. In 2002, the Athletics were the worst team in the American League (AL) West. Beane claimed their poor performance was due to a small sample size, but the author performed a 1-proportion test and found that the difference in their records were statistically significant (p-value < 0.05). This means the team’s last-place standing wasn’t random. Beane decided to trade some of his players and change other players' positions to improve the Athletics' record. His team did a lot better for the rest of the season. By the end of the season, the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees were tied for wins, despite the fact that the Athletics have a much smaller budget. Since Beane’s success, statistics have become much more popular in baseball. As Rudy states, “statistics has changed the game of baseball forever” (Rudy, 2011).

This article is very well written. There are several statistics concepts discussed, including sample size, 1-proportion tests, p-values, statistical significance, and the binomial distribution.

When I was reading through the article the first time, the only term that confused me was VORP. VORP is short for Value Over Replacement Player and it “calculates how many runs a batter adds to his team's total throughout the course of a season over that number which an ‘average major leaguer’ would contribute” (SportingCharts, 2015). I have been to a handful of baseball games, so I am somewhat familiar with the basics of baseball. However, I don’t know a lot of the technical terms. It wasn’t crucial for me to know what VORP was to comprehend the article, but I do believe that students need a little background knowledge about baseball before reading the text.

“Moneyball Shows the Power of Statistics” is not only about statistics in baseball, but it is also about its lasting impact. Several of my applied math classmates watched Moneyball when it came out, and it immediately sparked their interest in statistics. Sports statistics is a huge field of research. Do different positions or workouts affect players' performance? Are some urban legends true? Can a coach build a team purely on statistics? Since my background is applied math, I always like to provide my students with real-world applications of the concepts we are learning in class. I believe that sports, especially baseball, are great examples for statistics.

The author uses a lot of humor in his writing. The article starts out with the line “sabermetrics? No, it isn’t a cross between a sword and the metric system” (Rudy, 2011). He also compares someone talking about baseball statistics to a “Trekkie speaking Vulcan” (Rudy, 2011). This metaphor is not only humorous, but it appeals to fans of Star Trek. Lastly, the Athletics won 20 consecutive games while their team was on the upswing. Rudy asks “What (are) the odds of that?” before explaining how to calculate the probability and ultimately admitting that “(he) could be lazy and have Minitab do it” (Rudy, 2011). Nice product placement there, Rudy.

For this assignment, Susan instructed me to use the "sketch to stretch" strategy. This technique gives students an opportunity to “represent personal meaning through sketching after reading” (McLaughlin, 2015). Sketch to stretch is often “used in small groups after reading narrative or informational text” (McLaughlin, 2015). Rudy’s article is an informational text, so sketch to stretch would work well. I can teach this strategy to my students by first explaining that summarizing is “a reading strategy that involves extracting essential information from text” (McLaughlin, 2015). Then, I will explain the sketch to stretch technique to my students. I will demonstrate the strategy by reading the first paragraph of the assigned reading aloud. Then, I will draw a sketch and share it with the class.

This is my sketch for the term "sabermetrics." When it is introduced in the first paragraph, the author anticipates readers' reactions by stating that "it isn't a cross between a sword and the metric system" (Rudy, 2011). However, I don't think of sabers as swords, I think of lightsabers. Sabermetrics, in short, is the statistics of baseball, and I think the idea of someone using a lightsaber as a baseball bat is funny. However, I did not know what sabermetrics was before reading this article, so the sketch definitely helps me connect what I already know to new information so I can remember its meaning (not to mention, I'm teaching my students that it's okay if you aren't a great artist). This activity works well from an experiential learning perspective because students are reflecting on their prior experiences and connecting them to a new experience (sabermetrics in Moneyball).

After we have talked about my example as a class, I will have students work in small groups to read the rest of the text. They will then "express what the text meant to them through a sketch ... (and share) their sketches one at a time" (Rudy, 2011). Once the group has commented on a student's sketch, the student will offer his or her own interpretation of the sketch. Students will continue this process until everyone in the group has shared their sketch. Then, we will regroup, share some examples, and talk about some of our main takeaways from this exercise.

References

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Pearson Education.

Rudy, K. (2011, October 28). “Moneyball Shows the Power of Statistics.” The Minitab Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.minitab.com/blog/the-statistics-game/moneyball-shows-the-power-of-statistics?fbclid=IwAR2v8NcMJBnLHbX-IwgbEeUAkVzgdk9fRL87p1LdHo0rhoIpFr_erX3fGcQ

SportingCharts (2015). “Ultimate Guide to Value Over Replacement Player – VORP.” Retrieved from https://www.sportingcharts.com/articles/mlb/ultimate-guide-to-value-over-replacement-player-vorp.aspx

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Are The New England Patriots Impossibly Good?

This week, Heather, Susan, and I continued to frame our readings from a statistics perspective. We found an informational article from Harvard Sports Analysis titled “No, CBS Sports, The Patriots Have Not Found an Edge on Coin Flips.” This article would work well in a statistics class because it discusses probability and independence. It also presents calculations for the probability of multiple different outcomes.

In November 2015, Harvard Sports Analysis published an article to address the claim that the New England Patriots were “winning coin flips at ‘an impossible rate’” (Chase, 2015). The author, Harrison Chase, believes that “accusing anyone of cheating at coin flips is absurd,” so he goes on to prove them wrong with probability (Chase, 2015). At the time of publication, the Patriots had won 19 of the last 25 coin flips. In football (and most sports, really), the coin toss occurs at the beginning of the game. The captain of the visiting team calls either “heads” or “tails” while the coin is in the air. If he is correct, his team gets to choose which team goes first, which end zone his team defends, and which direction players go to score points (Rookie Road, 2019). The team who wins the coin toss controls how the game is organized, which gives that team a perceived advantage. The probability of the Patriots winning at least 19 of 25 coin flips is 0.73%. However, there are 32 teams in the National Football League (NFL). The probability of one or more of these teams winning at least 19 out of 25 coin flips is about 20%. The author also points out that it is misleading to choose 25 games out of nearly 250 games that Bill Belichick has coached (at the time). Looking at all of Belichick’s games, there is a 38.71% chance that a sequence of 25 games will have 19 or more heads. If the Patriots call "heads," it is very likely that they will win the coin toss. The bottom line is that the Patriots are not cheating, and CBS Sports’ headline is misleading.

Students need some background knowledge before reading the text. This includes basic knowledge of football games, coin tosses, the New England Patriots, and their coach. One thing that might confuse students is the passage where the author talks about Patriots coach, Bill Belichick. The author talks about Belichick without stating that he is the team's coach, so he is assuming that the reader is already familiar with the team. If I was to use this article for a statistics class years from now, Belichick might be long gone and students will have no idea who he is. Especially because Baltimore is so far away from Boston. This article is from Harvard University, which is in New England, so the Patriots are going to be the most popular football team in that area. Students should also be aware of “deflategate” because it is mentioned in the article. Deflategate was a huge Patriots controversy in early 2015, so I might need to give students an overview of the situation if I want to assign this reading in the future.

On the surface, this article might seem like it is only addressing the NFL controversy. However, it also illustrates the importance of interpreting data appropriately. The CBS sports article claimed that the Patriots were winning at an “impossible” rate because the probability of them winning at least 19 out of 25 coin flips was relatively small. However, further statistical analysis proves that while this occurrence is unlikely, it is not impossible. In statistics, it is important to not just take things at face value. Just because something seems impossible or unlikely, does not mean it is.

The author uses a very informal tone. However, he is obviously still a little angry that a huge media outlet would insinuate that his beloved Patriots cheated. He even states that “with Deflategate out of the way the media is looking for something to accuse the Patriots of” (Chase, 2015). In fact, “common sense… will tell you that the Patriots have not been cheating by winning coin flips at an ‘impossible’ rate” (Chase, 2015). Chase is a Patriots fan and wrote the article to inform non-Patriots fans.

For this assignment, Heather instructed me to use the “say something” strategy. This technique requires students to “work in pairs to read a text, stopping at designated points to turn and Say Something to their partners” (McLaughlin, 2015). “Say something” works well with informational text. Students can “make a comment, ask a question, make a prediction, clarify a point, or make a connection” (McLaughlin, 2015). I can teach this strategy to my students by explaining the importance of monitoring and clarifying the text. As a comprehension strategy, monitoring/clarifying “involves constantly asking ourselves ‘Does this make sense?’ and adapting strategic processes to make the message clear” (McLaughlin, 2015). After I have introduced the technique, I will ask a student to demonstrate it with me. The end of each paragraph will be a designated stopping point, so I will start by reading the first paragraph aloud. Once I have finished the paragraph, I will start the “say something” technique by asking my partner “What does the author mean by ‘an impossible rate?’” When I first read through the article, I wondered what someone would consider “impossible” in this context. Technically, an event is not impossible unless it has a probability of 0. I also wondered how many coin flips were taken into consideration. If the sample size is small, a relatively large amount of wins does not mean the coin flips are rigged. After I have demonstrated the “’say something" technique with my partner for the first few paragraphs, I will read the next paragraph aloud and let students work with their own partners to “say something.” Then, I will set the class free to read the rest of the article and pause after each paragraph to make comments and ask questions. Once students have completed the article, I will ask them to talk to their partners about some of the main questions, comments, predictions, and connections that they noted while they were reading the text. Then, we will regroup as a class and share some of the key takeaways.

References

Chase, H. (2015, November 5). “No, CBS Sports, The Patriots Have Not Found an Edge on Coin Flips.” Harvard Sports Analysis. Retrieved from http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2015/11/nocbs/?fbclid=IwAR0cARYA3xSXyija98hMJTZ70NGy1VFZG4_XayKdGBuvgmVSrenL1eMvruc

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Pearson Education.

Rookie Road. (2019). “Football Coin Toss.” Retrieved from https://www.rookieroad.com/football/basics/coin-toss/

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Lions, Tigers, and Bears: Is It Our Fault They're Disappearing? (Oh My!)

As an educator, I need to be able to present my students with the reading comprehension strategies they need to become proficient readers. Although my discipline is mathematics, it is still crucial that I promote literacy in my classroom. There are statistics courses offered in Maryland public high schools, but statistics concepts are introduced in almost every basic mathematics class. A common concept covered in a statistics unit is “bad” statistics. This includes improperly collected or interpreted data. This week, my partner, Heather, and I chose an article that debunked a tweet claiming “humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970.”

The Atlantic’s expository article “Wait, Have We Really Wiped Out 60 Percent of Animals?” introduces the claim that humanity has destroyed 60 percent of the world’s animal population since 1970. The organization that made this claim cited the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF’s) Living Planet report. However, this report only stated that the size of vertebrae populations has declined by 60 percent on average, which is very different from the claim that the whole animal population has declined by 60 percent. People are reading this tweet and believing it, which is problematic because the organization is making claims about metrics that were not assessed. There are countless issues with humanity killing off animals and wildlife, but author Ed Yong states that “when the reality is this sensational, there’s (no) need to sensationalize it further” with incorrect data analysis (Yong, 2018). It is crucial for reporters to characterize the problem and its scope correctly.

This article introduces important statistics concepts like populations and samples. The populations used in the WWF study were mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. These populations were mostly sampled through direct counts, camera traps, satellites, and proxies. However, none of these samples can be considered representative of the whole animal population because they were mostly taken in Europe. The animal population in Europe is not going to be representative of the animal population in Africa.

Students should have some background knowledge of concepts discussed in the article before reading the text. Some of this knowledge includes an understanding of WWF, their goals, and the purpose of the Living Planet report. I could give my students a quick overview of WWF’s Living Planet report before assigning the reading. I also need to make sure my students understand some of the vocabulary. This article uses some complicated terms, such as “pedantic,” “ether,” and “dichotomy.” I do not expect students to understand what most of these words mean, so we will define them before tackling the text. Students should also be aware of some of the references the author makes, including coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The author also references conspiracy theories and “fake news” in the government. This article is still recent, but it probably will not work as well as a reading assignment a few years from now.

Overall, this article is organized well. I believe it would work well as a reading assignment in a high school statistics class or other math class with a statistics unit. I really like that this article uses a textbook-type example with lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!). Students can easily see the connection between real-world examples and problems they would encounter in a math class. The following is Yong's example:

Imagine you have three populations: 5,000 lions, 500 tigers, and 50 bears. Four decades later, you have just 4,500 lions, 100 tigers, and five bears. Those three populations have declined by 10 percent, 80 percent, and 90 percent, respectively – which means an average decline of 60 percent. But the total number of actual animals has gone down from 5,550 to 4,605, which is a decline of just 17 percent.

I was looking through some reading strategies I could implement with my students, and really liked Maureen McLaughlin’s “save the last word for me.” In this activity, students “select a quote, fact, or idea from the text” (McLaughlin, 2015). Then, students get into groups and “explain why they chose the information and which connections they can make to it” (McLaughlin, 2015). The quote that stood out to me most in this article was "surely what matters is waking people up, and if an inexactly communicated statistic can do that, isn’t that okay?” (Yong, 2018). If I was doing a “save the last word for me” activity, I would pose this question to my group members and ask them to share their opinions. However, Heather and I were discussing this strategy and decided that a think-pair-share would probably work better. This article is a little controversial, so we agreed that a class discussion would be beneficial. Letting students discuss quotes and ideas they found interesting or important with their partners first will help facilitate a productive class discussion.

References 

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Pearson Education.

Yong, E. (2018, October 31). “Wait, Have We Really Wiped Out 60 Percent of Animals?” The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/have-we-really-killed-60-percent-animals-1970/574549/

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