Recommended: Listen to the Podcast Episode that accompanies this analysis Goal: To determine whether there is a decline in batting performance after a “choking” event in baseball relative to pre-event performance. Also, to determine which factors influence this effect. Data sources: http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index Event definition: 9th inning, 1 out, leverage index >= 1.5, batter hits into…

Recommended: Listen to the Podcast Episode that accompanies this analysis Goal: To test the following two hypotheses: (i) a pitcher can overcome having a lower fastball velocity by being more unpredictable in the type of pitches they throw (i.e., high entropy) and (ii) pitching success will be significantly related to entropy Data sources: http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index http://www.brooksbaseball.net/…

Recommended: Listen to the Podcast Episode that accompanies this analysis Goal: To investigate the interactive effect of throwing hand and batting stance on hitting performance using Major League Baseball data from 1992-2015 Data source: http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/ Descriptive Statistics: (values in black are proportions) Key takeaway: The majority of players (62% of lefties and 89% of righties) hit…

For those that enjoyed my episode on the Hot Hand in Sports (Episode 12) and my follow-up interview with Josh Miller that seems to have completely changed our thinking about this (Episode 15C), Josh was kind enough to send me links to some more recent work he and Adam Sanjurjo have done trying to provide…

Was listening to a recent episode of the “This Is You Brain on Sports” podcast co-hosted by John Wertheim from Sports Illustrated and Sam Sommers from Tufts University (Note: if you like my podcast I would recommend checking it out, that is if you are willing to tolerate lots of advertisements for sports gambling sites…

Here are my main reasons: 1. I wanted an outlet to be more creative in research communication When I was younger I used to love creative writing. I even once won a prize for a story I wrote called “The Chicken from Outer Space”. I miss that. When I first started as a scientist I…

When I finished my PhD in 1998 I felt incomplete. I had been doing what I felt was solid research investigating the visual perception involved in interception, with some studies identifying the information sources we use to judge when an approaching object will arrive (the time to contact, TTC) and where it will be when…

Hi Everyone, HeadTrainer is one the newest applications in the continually growing market of perceptual-cognitive training products for athletes. One of the most striking things about this app is the budget behind it – the production values are at the level of many video games and the company has a team of pretty high profile…

Pro Move Mini Motion Tracking System Review Note: the images and data plots are meant to accompany the review in Episode 9, Time Code 18:21 Product website Test 1: One sensor, linear motion -plots are acceleration data for me attempting to do 3 slow movements followed by 3 fast movements constrained to one axis. (Note,…