In tennis, is it true that beginning to serve in a set gives an advantage? Can the outcome of a match be predicted? Which points are important, and do real champions win the big points? Do players serve optimally? Does "winning mood" exist? The book answers such questions, demonstrating the power and beauty of statistical reasoning.

In tennis, is it true that beginning to serve in a set gives an advantage? Can the outcome of a match be predicted? Which points are important, and do real champions win the big points? Do players serve optimally? Does "winning mood" exist? The book answers such questions, demonstrating the power and beauty of statistical reasoning.

A PRACTICAL, REAL-WORLD GUIDE TO ANALYTICS FOR THE 5 MAJOR SPORTS: FOOTBALL, BASKETBALL, BASEBALL, SOCCER, AND TENNIS GAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE! This is the first real-world guide to building and using analytical models for measuring and assessing performance in the five major sports: football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and tennis. Unlike books that focus strictly on theory, this book brings together sports measurement and statistical analyses, demonstrating how to examine differences across sports as well as between player positions. This book will provide you with the tools for cutting-edge approaches you can extend to the sport of your choice. Expert Northwestern University data scientist, UC San Diego researcher, and competitive athlete, Lorena Martin shows how to use measures and apply statistical models to evaluate players, reduce injuries, and improve sports performance. You’ll learn how to leverage a deep understanding of each sport’s principles, rules, attributes, measures, and performance outcomes. Sports Performance Measurement and Analytics will be an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to bring analytical rigor to athletic competition: students, professors, analysts, fans, physiologists, coaches, managers, and sports executives alike. All data sets, extensive code, and additional examples are available for download at http://www.ftpress.com/martin/ What are the qualities a person must have to become a world-class athlete? This question and many more can be answered through research, measurement, statistics, and analytics. This book gives athletes, trainers, coaches, and managers a better understanding of measurement and analytics as they relate to sports performance. To develop accurate measures, we need to know what we want to measure and why. There is great power in accurate measures and statistics. Research findings can show us how to prevent injuries, evaluate strengths and weaknesses, improve team cohesion, and optimize sports performance. This book serves many readers. People involved with sports will gain an appreciation for performance measures and analytics. People involved with analytics will gain new insights into quantified values representing physical, physiological, and psychological components of sports performance. And students eager to learn about sports analytics will have a practical introduction to the field. This is a thorough introduction to performance measurement and analytics for five of the world’s leading sports. The only book of its kind, it offers a complete overview of the most important concepts, rules, measurements, and statistics for each sport, while demonstrating applications of real-world analytics. You’ll find practical, state-of-the-art guidance on predicting future outcomes, evaluating an athlete’s market value, and more.

The OUPblog Tenth Anniversary Book: Ten Years of Academic Insights for the Thinking World celebrates the incisive works that made the OUPblog what it is today: an unrivaled source for sophisticated learning, understanding, and reflection. Hand-picked by Oxford University Press editors, these selections feature James M. McPherson on Lincoln's greatest moment, Arne L. Kalleberg's on police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri, and Anatoly Liberman's exploration into the origins of the word "bigot, ̈among many others. From the fall of Rome and the science of happiness, to race relations and international law, the OUPblog has adapted the insights of authors, staff, and friends of Oxford University Press for an entire decade, earning its place as a 2013 Webby Award Honoree. Since 2005, more than 8,000 articles have been published, featuring daily commentary on a wide range of topics spanning politics, science, philosophy, music, and everything in between. Today, the OUPblog continues to represent the Oxford University Press's commitment to excellence in research, scholarship, and education, disseminating insights from the world's greatest thinkers.