SPORTS NUMBERS
What is sabermetrics?
Sabermetrics is the study of baseball using objective evidence, such as baseball statis-
tics. It uses scientifically based data and various interpretation methods to explain why
teams win and lose. Sabermetrics was taken from the acronym SABR, or the Society
for American Baseball Research, and was coined by baseball historian, statistician, and
writer Bill James (1949–).What are some of the statisticsused in baseball?
There are numerous statistics used in baseball, including batting and pitching statis-
tics. Batting statisticscan be divided into several numbers. The batting average(AVG)
is the number of hits a player makes divided by the number of times at bat. It does not
include walks or sacrifice hits. The runs batted in(RBI) is the number of runners who
434 scored on a player’s hit, base on balls, or sacrifice. The on-base plus sluggage(OPS) is
What are the odds when playing craps?
C
raps is probably the most popular game of chance in the world; it is also ille-
gal to play in many places. But it has a long history: It was played in ancient
Greece and Rome and was even a mainstay of some old 1930s and ’40s movies.
Craps can be played using a wall and a pair of dice. It is a popular casino game in
places such as Las Vegas—and even on the Internet—with betting on craps
involving a complex equation.Its popularity no doubt comes from its simplicity. In craps, a player throws
two dice; their number (roll) is the total of the dots on the top faces of the dice.
If the initial roll is a 7 or 11 (called a natural), the player wins. If the number 2,
3, or 12 comes up—called craps—the player loses, but keeps the dice. If the sum
of the dice adds up to the number 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10, that number becomes the
thrower’s “point.” The player then continues to shoot until he or she throws the
point number again, in which case the gambler wins and retains the dice. But if
the player shoots a sum of 7 before he or she can roll the point value, he or she
loses and gives the dice to the next player.
Craps is truly a game of chance, with the probability mathematics of craps
fairly straightforward. For example, take the probability of winning on a roll-by-
roll basis, in which P(pn) is the probability of rolling a point n. The resulting
numbers show that the probability of winning is 244/495, or the shooter wins
about 49.2929 percent of the time.