Final Reflection

I think I did exactly what I wanted to with my blog and with my final product. I feel that I got the message that I wanted across. As I said, I really do not like math at all, but I really like baseball. After starting to watch baseball, I wanted to learn how all of the statistics were calculated, and once I figured it out I started to enjoy math a little bit. I also noticed that a big problem among high school students is a general disdain for math because they do not see any real world application for what they are learning. After finding my own interest in math, and seeing this problem, I decided that I wanted to create an interesting resource for students to be able to learn more about baseball, prediction, math, and math driven careers. If I were to further develop my website, I would include more of the "higher level" statistics as well as more box scores and game predictions.

As far as the presentation went, I was happy with how I presented, but I am unsure of how I felt about the showcase. I definitely prefer just standing up in front of everyone and presenting. I think it makes it a lot easier to convey what I want people to hear, and I only have to say it once. It also allows for a forum where people may feel more open to ask questions to clarify things or to dig deeper into my project. I also feel like it might have been a little more manageable that way. Overall though, I really liked my presentation and from what I could tell, there were a lot of people who were interested in my final product. So, I might just keep it going!

Progress, Product, and My Audience

Educationally speaking, I haven't really learned a lot from my project. I spend a lot of time on baseball websites and looking at statistics for baseball (I'd like to try and work in a front office after school) so none of the statistical stuff was all that new. I did; however, learn a few things about the application of sabermetrics. Like I said in my last post, more and more schools are teaching sabermetrics classes and a lot of employers are looking for people who have a lot of statistical knowledge. What I have had a hard time finding has been videos that are applicable to this, because there aren't that many. So, for my final product (a wordpress) I think I'm going to find some videos to add to the blog, they might not be related to statistics, but they'll at least be remotely related to baseball.

For my final product, I am going to do a blog. I'd like to expand what I have here into something a little more, with more website links, some videos, box scores, whatever I can find that seems relevant. I want it to be similar to the MLB Fan Cave blog and the Cut4 blogs at MLB.com. So, I'd like to have relevant box scores for that day, matchup previews, interesting statistical stuff from the day, and whatever else seems cool to have on there. 

Lastly, my target audience is probably going to be people like me, people who love baseball but hate math. Throughout all of high school I was good at math but never applied myself in the classes because I didn't see how it was practical to learn as a skill for the career I wanted to go into. It still isn't practical for me, but understanding statistics makes it easier to understand a lot of the numbers in baseball. Also, with my final product, I'd like for my blog to center around just regular baseball stuff rather than advanced metrics. Most baseball fans (all sports fans for that matter) have a favorite team, so I'd like to try and have separate links for each team (that might be too big of and undertaking) and then to highlight the big games or match-ups for that day so that it's easy to navigating and you're not just looking at boring stuff the entire time.

So hopefully all of that works out!

Finding Further Research and College Classes

My question centers around why we do not teach practical math classes in school and how baseball can be used to make math classes more interesting. The main focus of these classes usually is sabermetrics, which are statistical measures used to project a baseball player or teams productivity. My comments revolved around adding more websites that related to my blog, so I will include those in my next blog post. In this blog post, I will talk about the increase in the availability of sabermetrics classes in colleges and the increased use of this skill set in baseball front offices.

As of 2007, the only college I could find that offered a sabermetrics course was Tufts University. Before that, you had to just take statistics classes and try to figure out how to graph out these findings on your own. Now, in 2014, there are a lot more schools that offer sabermetrics including Boston University, West Point, and Rutgers University. This shows that some schools statistics and athletics departments are seeing the importance of this class and how it relates to an actual real life job. The best part is that it is an elective meaning that the people who taking it are going to want to take it and want to learn about this and possibly try to get a job in baseball.

That is what I find most important about sabermetrics and mastering them, is that there are high paying jobs out there that require the skills learned by focusing on the statistical analysis of baseball. Also, not all of these jobs are in baseball. While baseball is probably the most prolific area hiring people with sabermetrics backgrounds, statistician Nate Silver has shown that statistical analysis can be used for just about everything. Silver gained renown for predicting 49/50 states correctly in the 2012 Presidential elections by using only statistics. From this popularity, he has started moving his "brand" into sports and other more lucrative areas. So, statistical knowledge can be an extremely profitable skill set to have and I think it's great to see that schools are starting to jump onto the sabermetrics bandwagon.