A Statistics Lesson

I am always the first one at school to throw out the "I will never use this outside of school" complaint to teachers. Math class was always the first class I criticized because it didn't take me but two seconds of Algebra my freshman year to realize that math was not my expertise. Some of my arguments were as followed:

• Algebra I: "When will I ever have to solve for 'x' as a History major?" (I had considered majoring in History...that is until I heard the words "History Paper")
• Geometry: "Do veterinarians really need to have the formula for the area of an octagon memorized?" (I wanted to be a vet...then I watch an episode of emergency vets and nearly got sick)
• Algebra II: "Factorization? I'm pretty sure music majors don't need to know the factors of 71. What? It's a prime number? See!" (Of course I went through the whole music major phase...that is until the dreaded music theory class I took my senior year.)
• Pre-Calculus: "I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure journalists don't need to know how to find the missing side of a triangle by using Sin, Co sin or Tangent." (I'm happy to say the whole journalism thing is still accurate.)
  

I would have put down my argument for my recent statistics class, but I didn't have too. I actually used something I learned from that class in a real-life problem. Yeah!

So, what did I do? I found out the Mean (average) height of all the players on the Softbank Roster (as of 1/22/2008), found the Standard Deviation of the data and used it see exactly where the heights of the American Players fit with the rest of the squad.

The mean height of all 74 players on the roster:

• 181.6cm or approximately 6 feet.

The Standard Deviation for all 74 players on the roster:

• 5.5 cm or approximately 2 inches.
  

Without going into too much detail, Standard Deviation is the measure of the dispersion the data set is from the mean. Basically, it tells you how far a particular number is from 'normal' in a data set. Doctors often use it to track the heights of children to make sure they grow at a normal rate. Most data (99.7%) falls within three standard deviation of the mean. If a particular number is not within three standard deviations, it is usually labeled an outlier. A scientist running an experiment with an outlier may suspect an error or a child's height that is considered an outlier can alert a doctor of a disorder.

On the chart above, the center dash in the mean. The rest of the marks are the +/- Standard deviations up to three. As you can see, the third + standard deviation is 198.1cm. Kameron Loe's height is 201cm. This means that Kameron's height is outside of the third standard deviation, thus putting him in the .3% of data that lies outside the third. Luckily though, he is not alone. His fellow American teammate Brian Falkenborg is listed as 200cm., which also puts him past the third standard deviation. The rest of the Americans' heights fall within the third standard deviation.

Basically, I just proved mathematically that Kameron will be a lot taller than his teammates. Haha. Hey, it was a good way to pass the time. This long off season continues...but not for too long!

-Holly

"Baseball is a habit. The slowly rising crescendo of each game, the rhythm of the long season-These are the essentials and they are remarkably unchanged over nearly a century and a half. Of how many American institutions can that be said?"

-George Will