THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

What level would the course be taught at?  Casual baseball fan?  Entry level sabermetrician?  Hard core, has-no-life sabermetrics nerd? 

From experience, it can be difficult to strike a balance.

I suspect most will respond with the travel zone issue. To which I say: Webinar (and I would pay state college tuition levels, most likely).

Excellent idea about the webinar…

Ben/1: It depends on the needs…

Is this something that you are seriously considering?  As long as it is not a Poli Sci class, then sure.
vr, Xei

Depending on the level of the course and the cost, I’d consider a webinar.  I think something between beginner and hardcore would garner the most interest.  I don’t think beginners are going to want to pay a lot for course as many of them are skeptical of the value of sabermetrics. The more advanced sabers probably feel they can learn it on their own.  If someone is somewhat comfortable with sabermetrics but wants to start doing their own studies or analyses, they might be interested in a course.

I’ll throw my vote for webinar, too.  No travel, wider audience, etc.

On the downside, with a webinar we wouldn’t get the much anticipated “who IS tangotiger?” reveal…

Some thing like this could be for you Tango

https://www.expertinsight.com/

Really appreciate all the comments, as well as the voting in the poll.  Very interesting.

I am surprised by the high interest (and I can only presume there are alot of people who would say “no”, but did not vote).  I just can’t believe that 70% of people would want a course, even at only 10$ / hr.

If I had to guess, I would have said 10-15% would vote yes.

The webinar thing sounds very interesting, for sure.  Right now, the majority said they’d pay, but just at 10-20 an hour.  But renting a room at the hotel near here amounts to about 15-20 an hour per person!  So, that leaves me with no profit, plus I’d have to take a vacation day from my regular job.

So, webinar has quickly bubbled to the top.

Thanks again…

When I was in (private) college, I calculated how much I was paying per hour of instruction, assuming my entire tuition went solely to my hours in class.  I think it came out to $50/hour.  Of course, the price of college in the US has almost doubled since then.

All depends on the content though.  I don’t think I’d be all that interested in a review of things, but if you did a sort of Studes-ish “Ten Things I Didn’t Know Last Week”, I feel like you could provide something interesting and new for everyone, with varying levels of sophistication, etc.

Ditto the webinar. 

What comes to mind for me are the Khan Academy videos, which are great for middle school/high school.  Each lesson is about 10-15 minutes.

In fact, yesterday I actually mentioned to my wife that I was thinking of watching some of the ones on statistics in order to better follow some of the discussion here.  (I took statistics in college but that was a long, long time ago . .)

The course I’d sign up for would be something like a walk through of the appendix to The Book, applying the concepts and techniques to issues that have been discussed here.

The next question involves depth.  Would there be any prerequisites?  When I had my first couple of basic stats classes in college, the instructor was a former park ranger, so the examples involved lots of trees. 

Are you talking basic stats with baseball examples or something closer to calculus type regression instruction?

Crazy thought, but if you’re considering a hotel conference room or any sort of Brick & Mortar venue, you might be able to get corporate sponsorship to help cover expenses, perhaps even from an MLB team. Just throwing it out there.

mezzie/13: I like the thought behind it.

steve/12: I’d tailor based on needs.

craig/11: several years back, I was envisioning a “workbook” to accompany The Book.  So, this would be kinda like that.

Where in NJ?

As an add-on to #13, since you (Tango) are in northern NJ, maybe you have contacts within the sport so that you could arrange something at the MLBAM studios in Secaucus. Up to you if that would be of interest, but it seems like it could be solid facility along with an opportunity to help get the word out about this work.

NaOH/16: thanks for the thought.  I’m not sure what I am envisioning would scale in that environment.  The idea I have is more like a workshop, not just lecture.  More like “ah, so that’s how the f-ck Tango did that… seems simple enough”.

If you’ve been to Java classes or Oracle classes or the like… something like that.

I’m not familiar with the Java or Oracle classes, but the MLBAM resources could be of broader value. I mean, on a certain level it depends on what your overall goals are.

But the quality of the MLBAM studios along with the reach they might be able to provide could be opportunities to grow the Tango Sabermetric Tutorial brand. Like, maybe once or twice a year you do something through/with MLBAM, and that helps draw attention and interest in your available webinars.

I voted that I would pay state-college tuition levels, but I too am out-of-state and would endorse the webinar idea.

Even smaller scale than the webinar, and more personal (albeit perhaps less effective):

You could sell 30-minute gmail chats.

I come to this website daily because my job doesn’t afford me the opportunity to get smarter every day, and this website is a brilliant peer group.  I learn something new practically every time I come here.

I would buy the opportunity to chat with Tango.  Especially since I have this long-term project of trying to apply sabermetric principles to my local high school baseball and basketball leagues.  If I paid Tango $40 for a one-hour chat window once per week, I’d have an opportunity to tell him, “hey, here’s the stolen base data and passed ball data for my local league, and the run environment...can you help me calculate the break-even point for stealing in this environment so I can better coach my guys?”

Basically you’d be doing the weekly chat concept that several ESPN personalities do, but your time is more valuable to me than theirs, so I’d be willing to pay for it.  Especially if the time with you was exclusive (or somewhat exclusive**), which would guarantee each individual’s questions were answered.

**My gut feeling is that 10 people in the “chat” is too many; their ability levels and interests will be too disparate to give quality attention to each of them. 

Anyway, great topic, and thank you for this blog.

Tango is so good at the nuts and bolts of just about all aspects of sabermetrics, I would pay for a class of his!

Like Jacob in #19, I do some stuff in non-pro baseball venues (leisurely looks at Big Ten college baseball and recently into more advanced college lacrosse stats as well as some college basketball. Will be doing high school hockey here soon, though, as well), so I would vote webinar and consider an exclusive gchat.

I think you should devise some kind of (free of charge) multiple choice test to grade peoples knowledge and to indicate what you would cover in the webinars so you could tailor the webinars to the right level. e.g. this webinar is for people who score at least 50.

It is also a great opportunity to post answers to issues that come up in a more polished format as a follow-up. Perhaps if you did it regularly you could make a paid section of the site for webinar folks.

Dang!  If MGL is willing to pay…

Living in the Greater Toronto area, I like the webinar approach, or something akin to Khan Academy with Q&A support.

How would you maintain your anonymity with a live seminar/course?

I voted for state college level pay but happily I’d pay a private college rate so long as I could get my employer to cover it.

A real live class would be cool but Northern Jersey might be tough even from Brooklyn so the webinar has its appeal too.  My guess is that people won’t pay as much for a webinar in the same way they won’t pay as much for digital media as they will for a book.  I’d pay much more for a “How to *do* Sabermetrics” class than a “What do we know about Sabermetrics?” class but I think the former could be pretty tough with a group that has quite different levels of computer and stats knowledge.

A model for online learning that seems to be very successful is this:

http://www.khanacademy.org/

The founder of that company was on the colbert report a couple nights ago. FWIW, I would gladly pay a small fee for an online class.

dan/26: very successful for students, I agree.  It’s financed by angel investors and partly supported by volunteers.  If you want to get Mark Cuban or Jim Balsillie to finance something like that for saberists, I’ll quit my corporate america job tomorrow, and I’ll open source all my IP…

Since I’m in the area, I’d be more interested in a local/college in-person lecture than a webinar, although you may just be able to stream it and make everyone happy. To be fair though, I recently moved to the unknown depths of north Jersey on work orders, so the only reason for my preference is that I’d actually be able to meet people in a new area interested in baseball beyond ESPN (See also: The loneliness defense).

I was curious about the potential identity reveal as well.  Perhaps you were planning to come out of the closet/mom’s basement?