Moneyball in Class

Attempting to tie in to the upcoming movie Moneyball, I used the book/movie as an excuse to do some Excel work with my students.

If you haven't read the book (and you're a stats geek), it's a wonderful recounting of the Oakland A's of the early 2000's, when they made the playoffs and competed with the Yankees and Red Sox, even though their payroll was a fraction of those two big-market teams' spending on player salaries.

What I took away from Moneyball was that the "Moneyballers" value different statistics than the rest of the baseball establishment.  Instead of valuing hitters by batting average, home runs and runs batted in, the Moneyballers emphasized on-base percentage, on-base plus slugging percentage, and a wide range of other stats.

Although it seemed like I talked for the entire 90 minutes of class, it was fun leading students through calculating baseball stats using Excel.  We also created some charts as well.  It saddens me to see students play games, etc. when they could be using something useful like Excel to make something useful and/or cool.  I hope I helped my students realize that Excel can be fun, too.