Quantifying Randomness in Sports
Posted on October 22, 2023
The 2023 Major League Baseball postseason has included some “upsets” that have people questioning whether the playoff format is fair. This happens whenever a perceived favourite does not win. The Braves, Dodgers, and Orioles all losing is taken as evidence of something wrong with the...
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Tags:
R, Statistics, Sports, Variance
Ranking the MCU Infinity Saga
Posted on September 26, 2023
Over the last few years my partner and I decided to tackle the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Neither of us were big into the story, having each seen only a few of the films, and now wanted to see this thing that had taken over popular...
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Tags:
R, MCU, Pop culture
More Wins than Draws in Games 6-10 of the World Chess Championship, which is now Basically Decided
Posted on December 10, 2021
Ian Nepomniachtchi was prescient. He said that wins in this World Chess Championship would come as a result of mistakes and that has certainly been the case. Unfortunately for Nepo the mistakes have been his and he trails Magnus Carlsen by three points with only...
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Tags:
Chess, Win expectancy, R
The Draws Continue in Games 1-5 of the 2021 World Chess Championship
Posted on December 2, 2021
Running back to Game 10 of the 2016 World Chess Championship, there have now been 19 straight draws in the classical portions of these championship matches. The five most recent entries in this draw-streak have come from the 2021 Championship in which World No. 1,...
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Tags:
Chess, Win expectancy, R
The Relation Between Home Game Attendance and Winning Percentage in MLB
Posted on October 29, 2020
I came across a post on the Data is Beautiful subreddit showing NFL home game attendance over the last 20 years and wondered how it has looked in Major League Baseball. So I grabbed team schedules and results, and playoff appearances and successes (i.e., winning...
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Tags:
MLB, Attendance, Winning percentage, NFL
The Juiced Ball Comes to the EPL [Updated]
Posted on September 28, 2020
This year, more than ever before I have committed to watching and following the English Premier League (EPL). The EPL has always been relevant in my family but just hasn’t ever been a focus for me. I would name “my team” if asked (Tottenham, Wolverhampton...
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Tags:
English Premier League, Tottenham, Scoring, Draw percentage
Predictions for the 60-Game 2020 MLB Season
Posted on July 22, 2020
Somehow there might be a baseball season in 2020. For many reasons I think the powers-that-be should have canceled it, but they didn’t because money. While I am glad to have baseball back in my life, the shortened season is going to be weird and...
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Tags:
Predictions, Awards, Playoffs, World Series
Comparing Canadian City Street Orientations
Posted on June 17, 2020
When I stumbled across Geoff Boeing’s street network orientation visualizations for 25 major cities in the United States and 100 cities around the World I made a note for myself to figure out how to (1) create something similar in R, and (2) do it...
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Tags:
R, Maps, Canada, OpenStreetMaps
Simulating a Deal with Monty Hall in R
Posted on January 30, 2020
The Monty Hall Problem is a counter-intuitive statistical puzzle stemming from one of the situations presented to contestants on Let’s Make a Deal. I was first exposed to the problem in an introductory Bayesian statistics course. Many months ago, I wrote code to simulate the...
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Tags:
R, Statistics, Monty Hall
A Second Canadian gets Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame
Posted on January 22, 2020
The 2020 National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees were announced yesterday. Derek Jeter fell one vote shy of becoming the second player to be voted in unanimously and Larry Walker became the second Canadian-born player to earn a spot in Cooperstown. Jeter’s first-ballot election was...
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Tags:
Awards, IBWAA, BBWAA, Hall of Fame
