THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Very interesting- have you given any thought as to how publicly you will be discussing it? I’m very interested to see what kind of participation you get, how the class goes, and how useful the students find it. A very experimental thing on many levels.

Right now I’m starting it low-key, which is why you’ll only see it here.

The only thing I can promise is that I’ll give it my best.

And the other thing I will strive for is that the students feel they earned their money’s worth.

I’m not interested in anything other than a positive experience for all concerned.

I can see this going on as a part-time thing, as a secondary income for me, so I’ll have a few classes a year.  I can see this become full-time, where my wife will get sick of me being home all day.  I can see this becoming so popular that I’ll even have guest teachers (that I’ll pay for).  If I were to give it odds, I’d say 60%, 30%, 10%, respectively. 

Right now, as you said, it’s all experimental, so we’ll see where the wind takes us.

Are there prerequisites in terms of math taken? Is college level probability good enough, or do I need to have some exposure to regression?

Two different courses, so everyone will be able to start somewhere.

I have not discussed this with Tango (this is the first I have heard of this too), and I get nothing from an endorsement, but I think this is a fantastic idea.

If you are thinking of a possible career in sabermetrics, with a team, with a web site, or something independent (whatever), this seems like a no-brainer to me.

Even if you are just interested as an avocation, if you have some money to burn, I highly recommend it. Even without knowing anything about the curriculum, I do know that there is no one that knows more about all aspects of sabermetrics than Tango, and no one who is able to communicate basic and advanced principles of sabermetrics better than Tango, and no one who is more honest, diligent and responsible than Tango.

Trust me, when I have a question about anything to do with sabermetrics, no matter how difficult, the first person I go to, or at least think of, is Tango, and I am never disappointed.

And no, this is not Tango’s mother spoofing my username!

Expensive......

The cost shakes out to about 1-3 credit hours at an accredited university, depending on quality of school. I’m willing to wager that Tango can pack more into a 20 hour online class than most universities.

Though I feel you, I want to lock up the early bird special but won’t be solvent enough to do so until mid-year.

Thanks to MGL for his kind words and unsolicited endorsement! 

You’ll have to regress his opinion somewhat towards the mean, because of his bias.  So, maybe randomly throw out one-fourth of his sentences, and replace it with “Tango is so-so” and “Tango should be not bad”.

I’ll throw in my endorsement too.  I can’t think of anyone who I’d recommend over Tango for a course like this.

Good luck with it, Tango!

BTW, if you ever *do* start looking for guest teachers in the future, I’ll probably submit an application.

Wow, would love to do this...how “beginner” is beginner?
I’d be particularly interested in DB Dev/Prog, but have zero knowledge

I’ll be asking each of the pilot students for their backgrounds, and I’ll tailor the two courses so that it matches to your experience and needs.

So, sometime next week, I’ll be emailing with the early responders to give more details.

Thanks for the interest!

Classes are now about half full. 

I was originally thinking of giving up to 4 weeks for registration, but I may have to close it off earlier.

I love the idea.  I might not be able to join the first semester but I hope to take a class at some point and really hope this turns keeps on and becomes a standard part of the training for sabermaticians.

If I weren’t still in high school taking AP Stat…
Best of luck, and once I nail down a job I’ll sign up if you still offer courses then.

When you say it’s half-full… what kind of class sizes are we looking at?
The reason I’m interested is twofold: first, I’m trying to estimate how long I have to make a decision, and second, I imagine it will somewhat affect the quality, i.e. smaller class size is generally better, though I doubt it will be THAT much of an issue here.

I’m definitely keeping the class size small for the pilot group, because I anticipate ALOT more interaction with the pilot group than with the regular class.  I may stop in the middle and ask for feedback, and even change the curriculum on the fly if I have to.  So, it’s going to be quite a personal setting.

As for how long you have, registration can close as early as next week, with an outside chance of closing the 2nd week of Jan.  But, if there’s a rush, there’s a rush.

Are you using any educational software to run this thing, or will it email/blog based?

It’s an online classroom setting.  My options I’m considering are:

GoToWebinar / GoToTraining

http://www.gotomeeting.com/fec/web_conferencing_comparison

WebEx Meeting Center

http://www.webex.com/products/web-conferencing.html

Yugma

http://www.yugma.com/getYugma.php

I’ll likely discard one myself after trying them out.  Then have one pilot group in one, another in a second, and see which of the remaining two works best.

There are several cool features across the board, so just a matter of figuring out what’s ideal.

Tom, may I suggest at least one ‘textbook’ for your course, aside from the one you wrote with MGL and Andy?

Wizardry: Baseball’s All-Time Greatest Fielders Revealed (Oxford 2011) was just included by Math Blog as an “interesting math book of 2011.” It is the only such book on baseball. 

http://math-blog.com/2011/12/16/interesting-mathematics-books-2011/

And the WSJ named it the baseball book of the season.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704893604576200792720588366.html

Your book focuses on Lindsey-Palmer Markovian models; Wizardry could demonstrate the use of regression in situations, such as non-batted-ball-data fielding analysis, in which Markovian models cannot be applied.

I hadn’t decided what I wanted to use for the intermediary class, but for the beginner class, I was going to use Panas’ Beyond Batting Average.

Tango

I am interested.

In the interests of persuading my wife the money is worth it (along with a small possibility of work covering the expense if I can spin it properly) can you answer the following:

1. How baseball centric will it be?
2. Do you get anything official at the end or just the knowledge? Is it something I could put on a cv for non baseball jobs?

If your wife is against it, you should probably avoid it.  Last thing you want is for this to be held over your head.

How baseball-centric?  It will be heavily baseball-centric.  I’d anticipate at least 90% of it having something to do with baseball.

Beyond getting knowledge and skills, you get to use me as a reference, if that’s of any use.

If “The Book” is the course textbook, this just seems like another excuse to get students to buy the professor’s book. Shameless self promotion. Shameless!

Tom, I am very interested.  I have a question about schedule: will the classes be a live webinar (i.e., one night a week for three hours), or will they be asynchronous so that we can participate on our own schedule?

Live, interactive, likely evenings, for two-hours per session, likely two sessions per week.

I would love to participate, but unfortunately my work schedule is too chaotic to allow for consistent free evenings.  Hopefully I will be able to work it out in another year or two.

Will this potentially lead to future webinars on how to parlay ones expertise and blogging audience into income via webinars?

I think you’re really onto something with this model and wish you huge success. I can certainly imagine copy-cats with authors with their own blogs teaching writing classes. It also reminds me of this, which you may want to investigate for ideas:
http://www.liveperson.com/Help/help-answers.aspx?ID=70&level=2

I’ve seen those.  There’s also JustAnswer.com, which is pretty cool.

As for a saber class, I also don’t see a big enough market for competition out there, but I could envision a partnership.

This sounds very exciting.  Unfortunately, my work schedule is too crazy to take a course right now.  if you keep doing this in the future, I might be interested in taking the intermediate course or higher when my work slows down.  I’m betting you’ll do a great job.  Good luck with it.

I think this would be awesome, Tango! Immediately, a couple questions come to mind.

1) When are enrollment fees due—will I need to pay the entire fee immediately, or would I have time to save up a little bit more money before paying?

2) As a follow up to your answer in #23, do you anticipate that skills/knowledge learned in this class will be fairly transferable to non-baseball related, yet analytically intense, professions?

I’d love to participate but it’s out of my price range for the next year or two. Btw, there’s a Sports Management program offered in conjunction through Concordia University that also covers areas like scouting and GMs. First heard about it through Rob Neyer and it’s at SMWW.com Might give you some ideas.

Kevin: fees for the pilot group will be due on a short time frame.

Yes, I think some of the skills would be transferrable.

Richard: thanks, I’ll check it out.

Early-bird registration closes Fri, Jan 6.  I’m just about all booked-up, but I’ll take any last-minute applicants at this point.

Do you have any teaching experience?  It might not be a bad idea, as in, it’d be a very good idea, to run your curriculum by an experienced teacher, or at least a friend who has some experience in that field, before you begin to take people’s money.  Teaching’s a lot harder than it looks at first.

Thanks, minesweeper, I’ve got it covered.

If I sent you an email Thursday and still have not heard back, should I send you another email? Or are you waiting until Friday to send out emails? I do not want to spam your email box, but I do not want to miss the early-bird registration either

I was going to contact everyone with a mass email on Friday.  I received so many little questions, that I figured that everyone would benefit for the group questions.

I just sent an email to everyone who expressed interest in the pilot group.

If you did NOT receive this email, email me asap.

In fact, I’ve already reached my limit in the class size, but I will accept any late stragglers until Friday.  If I get a wave, I will split it up into three groups, to ensure a “cozy” sized class.

This is a no brainer!  I expect it to be money well spent.  I signed up for it and I am really looking forward to the classes.

And slot me in now for any future Birnbaum or MGL guest teaching classes!

late straggler here. just sent a mail to tangotiger. can’t wait for the classes!!

Early-bird registration now closed.

Anyone who has expressed interest was sent a registration form a couple of weeks ago, as well as a questionnaire.  Deadline for registration is mid-Feb.

If you have not received the reg form, please email asap.  tom~tangotiger~net

Thanks…