Dr. Jim Albert Talk
Dr. Albert, Professor of Statistics at Bowling Green State University, visited UC and gave two presentations in Lindner Hall and Swift Hall.
First talk:
Detecting Streakiness Using a Bayes Factor
Abstract: A general problem in sports is assessing the significance of streaky or hot-hand performances. Here we focus on the spacings or gaps between successes in baseball hitting data. Consistent and streaky hitting models are defined on the basis of the underlying hitting probabilities and a Bayes factor statistic is used to measure the support for the streaky model. One assesses the significance of the streaky patterns in many binary sequences by comparing the Bayes factors with predictions from a consistent hitting model. We look to see if there exist baseball hitters who tend to be streaky or consistent throughout their careers.
Second talk:
A Multilevel Bayesian Approach for Modeling the Time-to-Serve in Professional Tennis
Abstract: An overview of the state of tennis analysis is given, providing a summary of the major results and the opportunities for future work given the availability of point-by-point datasets for Grand Slam events. Tennis analytics needs improvement judging by the current ranking systems for professional players. There is general interest in the value of pre-performance routines in elite sports and we use a Bayesian multilevel model to explore the time to serve of both ATP and WTA players in professional tennis. This study finds a wide variation in the pace of tennis players and how they adapt to game conditions such as the length of the previous point and the importance of the point.
Jim Albert is Professor of Statistics at Bowling Green State University. His interests include Bayesian modeling, statistics education, computational statistics, and the application of statistical thinking in sports. His books include Curve Ball (with Jay Bennett), Ordinal Data Modeling (with Val Johnson), Teaching Statistics Using Baseball, and Analyzing Baseball with R (with Max Marchi).
Personal Website: http://www-math.bgsu.edu/~albert/