Uploaded October 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Statistics and data science have become so crucial to baseball that the field even has an official name: sabermetrics. (And it’s big money(ball), baby.)
And you can bet that the numbers are getting crunched, big-time, for the 119th edition of the World Series this autumn. Whether you’re rooting for the Texas Rangers or the Arizona Diamond Backs, everyone wants to know who’s going to win. Can statistics tell us? To hear more, we asked Ian McGovern, a doctoral candidate in the UCLA Department of Statistics and Data Science who studies causality within a point process framework.
In this “go sports!”-themed installment of the UCLA College video series, “Silly Questions, Smart Bruins,” McGovern explains gambler’s fallacy, determines a little World Series probability and shares the ultimate data science jock jam to get the baseball calculations — and party — flowing.
Watch the previous installments of “Silly Questions, Smart Bruins": youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZLgIqm-v5xNe3pBQUoUNm22bkp3EsTfo
Credits:
“SQSB Theme”
music by What’s Everyone Working On? Music Publishing
Music: bensound.com
License code: O8KHT5E1084IGNP4 License code: 3O97MVK3EQDIV8SL
Baseball photo: Jimmy Conover/Unsplash
Statistics and data science have become so crucial to baseball that the field even has an official name: sabermetrics. (And it’s big money(ball), baby.)
And you can bet that the numbers are getting crunched, big-time, for the 119th edition of the World Series this autumn. Whether you’re rooting for the Texas Rangers or the Arizona Diamond Backs, everyone wants to know who’s going to win. Can statistics tell us? To hear more, we asked Ian McGovern, a doctoral candidate in the UCLA Department of Statistics and Data Science who studies causality within a point process framework.
In this “go sports!”-themed installment of the UCLA College video series, “Silly Questions, Smart Bruins,” McGovern explains gambler’s fallacy, determines a little World Series probability and shares the ultimate data science jock jam to get the baseball calculations — and party — flowing.
Watch the previous installments of “Silly Questions, Smart Bruins": youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZLgIqm-v5xNe3pBQUoUNm22bkp3EsTfo
Credits:
“SQSB Theme”
music by What’s Everyone Working On? Music Publishing
Music: bensound.com
License code: O8KHT5E1084IGNP4 License code: 3O97MVK3EQDIV8SL
Baseball photo: Jimmy Conover/Unsplash
