Statistical Baseball Predictions

As the 2012 Major League Baseball season gets under way, it’s a good time to check in on the predictions of Bruce Bukiet, mathematics professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

http://m.njit.edu/~bukiet/baseball/baseball.html

Using the performance data from all of the expected players, Bukiet applies a mathematical model to predict the final win-loss standings for every team in the league.  Last year, Bukiet’s model correctly identified six of the eight playoff teams.

Unlike most predictors (my statistics friends would probably prefer I use the term projectors), Bukiet does not seem shy about comparing his past predictions to the actual results.

An interesting mathematical question would be “How can we measure how accurate these predictions really are?”

By patrick honner, ago

Rent Stability

As usual, I wasn’t thrilled when my landlord told me about this year’s rent increase.  As someone familiar with how exponential growth works, I understand the power of the small, consistent percent increase.

After some mild protests, the landlord came back with some good news:  he was going to reduce my increase by $25 per month!  I wasn’t exactly thrilled with that, either, but it’s a gesture.  And I thought to myself “At least I won’t be paying future increases on that $25!”

Which got me thinking:  if my rent goes up 3% every year, how much of a difference will that $25 make?  The answer:  not much.  In my lifetime, anyway.

At 3% per year, the $25 difference in rent now will be a $30 difference in 5 years.  In 15 years, the difference in the two rents will be around $40.  And if I stick around for 50 years, the difference will be about $90.

If I could stay here for 200 years, I’d see a big difference:  almost $10,000!  But then again, my rent would be around $1 million per month.

I’ll have to be content knowing that, while in the short term I don’t see much benefit, I win out as t goes to infinity.

By patrick honner, ago

This is Not a Rectangle

After having fun exploring rigid and non-rigid frames, I hung one of our indeterminate quadrilaterals up on the board.  The next day, we were proving a theorem about orthodiagonal quadrilaterals, and the final step concluded that a particular quadrilateral was actually a rectangle.

I found a cute little spot to finish our proof.

This elicited a few laughs from students who appreciated the irony.

But apparently, some students in a later class did not appreciate it.  They felt the need to chime in.

As a general rule I must oppose mathematical graffiti, but it’s hard not to respect their position.

By patrick honner, ago
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