Stats + Stories

Rory McIlroy was leading the 2025 U.S. Masters golf tournament by two strokes after three rounds. So was his ultimate victory a sure thing? How predictive is a lead after three rounds of a golf tournament for victory after the 4th round? In today's episode of stats and stories, we hit the links to explore outcomes in professional golf tournaments, along with addressing whether golf handicaps make for fair comparisons between golfers with guest Dr. Lawrence L. Kupper.

American Football is a game played with 11 players on offense competing against 11 players on defense, with a sequence of plays executed as one team attempts to outscore the other, but each discrete play reflects actions on the field by players and off the field by coaches. For example, what is the best spot on the field to complete a pass and not get it intercepted? How do quarterbacks differ with respect to their release points? When should you ice the kicker? These are the questions that we are trying to answer on this special football-themed episode of Stats+Stories. 

Rory McIlroy was leading the 2025 U.S. Masters golf tournament by two strokes after three rounds. So was his ultimate victory a sure thing? How predictive is a lead after three rounds of a golf tournament for victory after the 4th round? In today's episode of stats and stories, we hit the links to explore outcomes in professional golf tournaments, along with addressing whether golf handicaps make for fair comparisons between golfers with guest Dr. Lawrence L. Kupper.

Sports generate a lot of data among them individual player metrics, team performance data, and specific game statistics. And there are a lot of tools to crunch all those numbers. Learning to use them can be a challenge and is the focus of many sport analytics classes offered in the United States. We hear about one professor’s approach to teaching sports stats in this episode of Stats and Stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories with guest Mark Glickman.

Athletes around the world are preparing to live out their Olympic dreams in Paris this summer. Many of those athletes have been competing in national and world championships before participating in Olympic trials in order to join their national teams. But how can an athlete be sure they’re peaking at the right time? How can they know whether adding an additional element to a routine or changing the angle of a throw will give them an advantage over the competition? Well, there’s data for that and that’s the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, with guest Daniel Webb

Dan Webb is the Director of Performance Analytics at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) in Colorado Springs and accomplished leader in performance analytics and sports science, using innovative data science and statistical modeling methods to solve challenging performance problems. Dan has led efforts to develop and implement cutting-edge solutions to model and predict Olympic-level performance, enabling data-informed decision-making for both the USOPC and NGBs. Under Dan's leadership, the Performance Innovation department continues to provide integrated and sustained competitive advantages for Team USA by deriving insights from data to improve athlete performance and optimize training, competition, and resource allocation strategies.

Welcome to Stats+Stories today we are trying something a bit different, with Major League Baseball’s opening day just hours away from the release of this episode we thought we would go back into the vault and throw some old school Stats+Stories baseball episodes at you. The first of which is as far back as you can go into the Stats+Stories archive, our first episode with former host Bob Long former panelist Richard Campbell, and guest Jim Albert who helped usher the show into what it has become today. So without further ado here is episode one, “Baseball and Statistics” with Jim Albert.
The second episode features Terence Moore. Moore, who has worked at Atlanta Journal Constitution, CNN, ESPN and other notable outlets had a lot to say about “Reporting On Sports In The Digital Era” so I’ll let him take it away with episode 18.
Last but certainly not least, we have a much more modern episode of the show which ironically happens to be about the oldest “Numbers Behind America’s Pastime”. Christopher Phillips joined us in episode 177 to discuss the entirety of baseball history from the first big league reporter from the early 1900s to the moneyball craze over a century later.

The Women’s World Cup is about to kick off in Austrailia and New Zeland with the defending champion U.S. Women’s national team once again the favorite to win the whole thing. They will have to make it past the English, Spanish and German sides though, before they raise the world cup trophy high. A new book new out now explores the tournament with guest Adam Beissel. 

What does 2022 have in common with 2018 and 2026? What is special about 2023? These years include a month where work productivity will be reduced in many countries around the world. Each year will have a month when attention is split between work email and the most beautiful game. Soccer’s (aka Futbol’s) World Cup once again draws the attention and passion of much of the world. Today’s episode focuses on the economics of global sporting events with guest Adam Beissel.

Christopher J. Phillips is a historian of science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research is on the history of statistics and mathematics, particularly the claimed benefits of introducing mathematical tools and models into new fields. He is the author of "Scouting and Scoring: How We Know What We Know about Baseball" and "The New Math: A Political History," and his work has been featured in the New York Times, Time.com, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, and Nature. He received his Ph.D. in History of Science from Harvard University.

Luke Bornn (@LukeBornn) is currently Vice President, Strategy and Analytics for the Sacramento Kings. Prior to joining the Kings, Bornn served as Head of Analytics for A.S. Roma of the Italian Serie A Football League, where he worked closely with managers, coaches and sports scientists to measure and evaluate athletes and performance.

Dr. Scott Evans is a tenured Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Director of the George Washington Biostatistics Center. He is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and three textbooks on clinical trials including Fundamentals for New Clinical Trialists. His other positions include the Director of the Statistical and Data Management Center (SDMC) for the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG), a collaborative clinical research network that prioritizes, designs, and executes clinical research to reduce the public health threat of antibacterial resistance as well as the Editor-in-Chief of CHANCE and Statistical Communications in Infectious Diseases (SCID) magazines.

Luke Bornn (@LukeBornn) is currently Vice President, Strategy and Analytics for the Sacramento Kings. Prior to joining the Kings, Bornn served as Head of Analytics for A.S. Roma of the Italian Serie A Football League, where he worked closely with managers, coaches and sports scientists to measure and evaluate athletes and performance.

Alan Schwarz (@alanschwarz) is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist best known for his reportage of public health issues for The New York Times. His 130-article series on concussions in sports is roundly credited with exposing the seriousness of head injuries in the National Football League and all youth athletics. His work was profiled in several films and was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, journalism's highest honor. A subsequent series on A.D.H.D. and other psychiatric disorders in children led to his writing "A.D.H.D. NATION: Children, Doctors, Big Pharma and the Making of an American Epidemic ." He was awarded the 2013 ASA Award for Excellence in Statistical Reporting in recognition of his outstanding work.

Alan Schwarz (@alanschwarz) is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist best known for his reportage of public health issues for The New York Times. His 130-article series on concussions in sports is roundly credited with exposing the seriousness of head injuries in the National Football League and all youth athletics. His work was profiled in several films and was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, journalism's highest honor. A subsequent series on A.D.H.D. and other psychiatric disorders in children led to his writing "A.D.H.D. NATION: Children, Doctors, Big Pharma and the Making of an American Epidemic ." He was awarded the 2013 ASA Award for Excellence in Statistical Reporting in recognition of his outstanding work.

Dennis Lock (@LockAnalytics) currently serves as Director of Analytics for the Miami Dolphins NFL team. In his role, he supports football operations through research and statistical analyses. He has been a consultant for the Iowa State University men's basketball team and is a co-author of a popular statistics textbook.

Terence Moore (@TMooreSports) is a national sports columnist and commentator who is a regular television contributor to CNN, ESPN "Outside the Lines and MSNBC. He also is a columnist for SportsonEarth.com, MLB.com and CNN.com. In addition, he does television work for the NFL Network, and he appears every Sunday night on a locally top-rated show in Atlanta. 

Jim Albert, co-author of Curveball: Baseball, Statistics and the Role of Chance in the Game , editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis and Sports , and professor of statistics at Bowling Green State University will join the Stats and Stories regulars to discuss why statistics and baseball have been linked for decades and how this connection has strengthened with the growing presence of sabermetrics in player and team management.