(Press-News.org) TORONTO -- What can sports teams learn from the manufacturing industry? Plenty, according to Timothy Chan of the University of Toronto (U of T) and Douglas Fearing of the Harvard Business School.
Using statistics from the 2012 Major League Baseball season, Chan and Fearing found that positional flexibility – the ability of a player to play multiple positions – is valuable, responsible for up to 15 per cent of the team's runs, as was the case with the Chicago Cubs. Other teams like the Washington Nationals and the Tampa Bay Rays were less robust to injuries.
"Flexibility is important because it provides a team with options and allows a team to field a good line-up even if some players are injured," said Chan, an engineering professor at U of T.
They compared this flexibility with that of automotive manufacturing networks that help companies continue to operate efficiently even when changes occur in supply and demand. Similarly, they say, a baseball team wants to keep winning games if players are injured.
Chan and Fearing presented their insights at the 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where their paper, "The value of flexibility in baseball roster construction," took first place.
Chan's primary focus is operations research in health care. However, he is enthusiastic about using the tools from that research to study sports.
"The mathematical tools I develop to solve healthcare engineering problems have broad application in other domains. It is exciting to be able to combine my interest in sports with my methodological research."
For example, at the 2012 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, he and U of T colleague David Novati proposed a new methodology for quantifying the value of a hockey player.
They are developing a novel classification system for junior hockey players using advanced mathematical methods, in order to find patterns in performance data that may be otherwise hard to detect. The proposed project represents the first effort to analyze junior hockey players, using similar mathematical models that he developed for the NHL.
"Eventually, we may be able to relate performance at the junior level to the professional level," said Chan. "Such research may inform strategies for drafting or targeted recruitment of high-potential players."
### END
What can sports teams learn from the manufacturing industry? Plenty
2013-03-13
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
New approaches for controlling pesticide exposure in children
2013-03-13
New research on household pesticide contamination emphasizes the need for less reliance on pesticides and more emphasis on neatness, blocking cracks where insects can enter and other so-called "integrated pest management" (IPM) measures, scientists have concluded. Their study appears in the ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Chensheng Lu and colleagues cite previous studies showing that urban, low-income, multifamily, public housing dwellings are prone to severe pest infestation problems. Families in Boston public housing developments, for instance, rank ...
Paving the way for greater use of ancient medical knowledge
2013-03-13
Scientists are reporting an advance toward overcoming a major barrier to tapping the potential of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and India's Ayurvedic medicine in developing new and more effective modern drugs. Their report appears in ACS' Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.
Andreas Bender and colleagues explain that TCM has made key contributions to modern medicine. In the world's largest international clinical trial, for instance, scientists concluded that Artesunate, a derivative of the Chinese herb qinghao, should replace quinine as a treatment for ...
Breakthrough in battle against leukemia
2013-03-13
Scientists at Griffith University's Institute for Glycomics and The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles have discovered a critical weakness in leukaemic cells, which may pave the way to new treatments.
The research team has demonstrated that leukaemic cells can be eradicated by removing a carbohydrate modification displayed on the cell's surface.
Director of Griffith University's Institute for Glycomics, Professor Mark von Itzstein is the Australian team leader. He said the discovery is an important advance against leukaemia, a cancer of malignant ...
It's all in the way we move
2013-03-13
When, how and why modern humans first stood up and walked on two legs is considered to be one of the greatest missing links in our evolutionary history. Scientists have gone to the far ends of the earth – and the wonderful creatures in it - to look for answers to why we walk the way we walk.
In the latest such search, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (South Africa) have taken a closer look at bipedal kangaroos and wallabies and how they move compared to their cousin-marsupials, such as the quadrupedal Tasmanian wolf.
In an article ...
Paraffin encapsulated in beach sand material as a new way to store heat from the sun
2013-03-13
The search for sustainable new materials to store heat captured from the sun for release during the night has led scientists to a high-tech combination of paraffin wax and sand. Their report on the heat-storing capability of this microencapsulated sand appears in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
Benxia Li and colleagues explain the need for better materials that can store and release heat. These so-called "phase-change" materials" (PCMs) are essential, for instance, for storing heat from the sun for use in providing energy at night or during cloudy periods. PCMs ...
Doing business with a parrot
2013-03-13
This press release is available in German.
VIDEO:
Muffin and 13 other cockatoos showed the skills to wait and trade 'normal' for 'better' or 'more' nuts.
Click here for more information.
Waiting: a clever move!
In the 70ties, self-control of human infants was investigated using the prominent 'Stanford Marshmallow Experiment': the children were presented with a marshmallow and ...
Younger doctors more likely to train and work closer to home
2013-03-13
Younger doctors are more likely than older generations to train and work in the same region as their home before entering medical school. New research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine investigating the geographical mobility of UK-trained doctors, reveals that 36% attended a medical school in their home region. 34% of hospital consultants and GP partners settled in the same region as their home before entering medical school. The geographical distribution of doctors is an important factor in the equitable distribution of health services.
Trevor ...
Extreme water
2013-03-13
Earth is the only known planet that holds water in massive quantities and in all three phase states. But the earthly, omnipresent compound water has very unusual properties that become particularly evident when subjected to high pressure and high temperatures. In the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a German-Finnish-French team published what happens when water is subjected to pressure and temperature conditions such as those found in the deep Earth.
At pressures above 22 MPa and temperatures above 374°C, beyond the critical ...
Surprising control over photoelectrons from a topological insulator
2013-03-13
Plain-looking but inherently strange crystalline materials called 3D topological insulators (TIs) are all the rage in materials science. Even at room temperature, a single chunk of TI is a good insulator in the bulk, yet behaves like a metal on its surface.
Researchers find TIs exciting partly because the electrons that flow swiftly across their surfaces are "spin polarized": the electron's spin is locked to its momentum, perpendicular to the direction of travel. These interesting electronic states promise many uses – some exotic, like observing never-before-seen fundamental ...
Evidence supports blocking immune response to enhance viral therapy against solid tumors
2013-03-13
Following several years of study, investigators have found more evidence that viral therapy to treat solid tumors can be enhanced by blocking the body's natural immune response.
Oncolytic viruses have shown promise as anticancer agents, with variations of the herpes simplex virus (HSV) among the most commonly used. However, many studies have shown that the effectiveness of viral therapy to eradicate tumors has not been as successful with patients as it has been in the lab. These results have led researchers to examine the body's immune system response to determine what ...