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Showing posts with label Moneyball Analytics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moneyball Analytics. Show all posts

Thursday 5 September 2013

Business Intelligence - Are you game for the Moneyball Process?

The importance of data-driven decision making and different aspects of looking at data was much popularized among the civic society by Brad Pitt starred Hollywood movie ‘Moneyball’ which is based on a true story.

A quick snapshot of the storyline:
“Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is upset by his team’s loss to the New York Yankees in the 2001 postseason. With the impending departure of star players, Beane attempts to devise a strategy for assembling a competitive team for 2002 but struggles to overcome Oakland’s limited payroll. Billy turns baseball on its ear when he uses statistical data to analyze and place value on the players (not star players though) he picks for the team. This resulted in Oakland’s Athletics (baseball team) set a team record of 20 wins in a row. Similar strategy was adopted by Boston Red Sox’s who won the World Series in 2004 since their first win in 1918”

(Sources: WIKI, IMDB)

What Beane had done differently that turned the game around was application of Sabermetrics (A Statistical analytics method of analyzing data points in the game of baseball). The analytics lead application of Sabermetrics helped Beane to question traditional methods of evaluation such as RBI (Runs Batted In) and batting average. It took in-depth analysis to conclude that matches were not won by players with higher batting average but by those with a higher On Base percentage (OBP), Slugging percentage (SLG). Beane formed a team based on these new metrics and other parameters.