Playing by numbers
The statisticians are at the gate. But can numbers ever make sense of something as fluid as football?
By Ed Smith
Ten years ago, walking past the Harvard bookstore, I saw a billboard inviting me to discover "What happens when sport is exposed to the scientific method". It was an advert for a book that was going to become famous: Michael Lewis's "Moneyball".
I was spending a semester at Harvard—right in the middle of my cricket career, as it turned out, though the number of grains of sand left in the egg-timer is never clear at the time. I stopped in my tracks in the November snow. That science could revolutionise sport: the idea was thrilling, and also troubling.
More from 1843 magazine
1843 magazine | “It’s been a very long two weeks”: how the Gaza protests changed Columbia
The camp has been cleared. But the faculty of the Ivy League university remains deeply divided
1843 magazine | Rahul Gandhi is on the march. But where is he heading?
He wants to be the champion of Indian liberalism. First he needs to save his party from irrelevance
1843 magazine | It began as a rewilding experiment. Now a bear is on trial for murder
The death of a jogger in the Italian Alps has sparked a furious debate about the relationship between humans and nature