Sports

Last week, I described how to build a plus/minus score for individual players based on data from NBAstuffer. I enjoyed walking through that process, so lets continue the series and expand our focus. Five-man units vs. Individual Players One of the first things I talked about on this site was comparing different metrics and choosing the right one for the task at hand. Plus/minus for individual players is a weird metric, because it’s taking a team outcome (net change in score) and applying it at an individual level.

I think its great that sports statistics are a big thing in popular media. It makes fans and media better informed about their team and players, and it provides an entry point for people to get interestd in statistics. That said, there seems to be a perpetual innumeracy in the way folks talk about a lot of these metrics. One thing I see come up repeatedly is the distinction between metrics that look at a player’s past performance and say, “How important was that player to the team’s success?