Moe Abdou interview Wayne L. Winston, author of the book Mathletics
The winning formula
As a spectator, I pay attention to my favorite athlete’s statistics to see how he’s doing in comparison to the best in his sport. For the owner of his team, however, his statistics will likely determine his relative worth to the team. When Brad Pitt stared in the movie Moneyball, he played Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane, who was trying to field a winning baseball club on a forty-one million budget by employing computer-generated analysis to acquire new players. Despite his unorthodox approach, Beane build a playoff team, and won the exact number of games as the New York Yankees. Each win, however, cost him $260K while the Yankees paid roughly $1.4M per victory. Indiana University professor, Wayne Winston, was a big contributor to the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks’ championship run; here’s how the statistics and rating system ( Mathletics ) he developed helped….