Major League Data Science vs. the World Series

UCLA doctoral student Ian McGovern breaks down some baseball-themed statistics

Ian McGovern with 3 small baseball players floating around him

UCLA College | October 24, 2023

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 Diamondbacks — or whoever was savvy enough to sign this all-star — 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.”)