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Looking at spacings to assess streakiness

  • Jim Albert EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: May 16, 2013

Abstract

There is much interest in studying the hot hand behavior of individuals and teams in sports. We collect success/failure data for each of the hitters in a particular baseball season, focusing on the spacings or number of at-bats between consecutive successes. Consistent and streaky models are defined on the basis of the underlying geometric probabilities and a Bayes factor statistic is developed to compare the two models. By looking at the ensemble of test statistics over all players, we see if the patterns of streakiness differ from what one would predict from a consistent hitting model. An interesting observation from this study is the pattern of streakiness depends on how one defines a success in a plate appearance.


Corresponding author: Jim Albert, Bowling Green State University-Mathematics and Statistics Bowling Green, Ohio, USA

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Published Online: 2013-05-16
Published in Print: 2013-06-01

©2013 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston

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