‘Mathletics’ discusses sports, math

Wayne Winston may teach math for a living, but that doesn’t mean he thinks of it as work.

As a professor of operations and decision technologies at the Kelley School of Business for the past 34 years, Winston combined his passion for math with a lifelong love of sports into his book “Mathletics: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football.”  

The book explains the mathematical methods that professional basketball, football and baseball teams use to evaluate players and strategies and ultimately win more games.

As an example, Winston describes in the book a technique he developed with friend and USA Today sports statistician Jeff Sagarin called the adjusted plus-minus. The technique accounts for how well a basketball team performs when a particular player is on or off the court.    

Winston has been fascinated by both math and sports for most of his life.

“I’ve liked sports since I was in fourth grade, and I got interested in math probably in the seventh grade,” Winston said. “I would make up my own little games to play out baseball seasons. I’ve always been interested in them.”

For Winston, the book also gave him an opportunity to contribute to a subject area that has become popular in recent years with the publication of books such as
“Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” by journalist Michael Lewis in 2003.

It also allowed him to address gaps he saw in current writing on the subject.

“‘Moneyball’ is very good, but it doesn’t explain the math,” Winston said. “I wanted to explain to people the theory behind how teams use the stuff.”

Since his youth, Winston has seen more and more professional teams using math and statistics to boost performance.

“In baseball, over half the teams are using math to help their performance,” Winston said. “In basketball, maybe a little bit less than half. In football, it depends on what you call math. They all do some analysis, but I’m not sure it’s very mathematical.”

Winston’s students will be familiar with many of the topics he discusses in the book, as he regularly incorporates sports analysis into his lectures.

Winston put his retention skills to use when he competed on the television game show “Jeopardy!” in the 1990s, becoming a two-time champion. His popularity among students is due in no small part to his in-class trivia questions.

Winston has been busy in the past few months promoting his book on National Public Radio and ESPN Radio. Despite this, he has still found the time to teach his regular courses and prepare for a new undergraduate class starting in the spring, one specifically on the subject of math and sports.

Sagarin said he believes Winston’s teaching and technical ability are what set him apart and make him uniquely qualified to write a book on math and sports.

“Wayne is a good teacher. He knows how to explain things to people,” Sagarin said. “There isn’t anybody out there that could have explained this stuff as well as Wayne did. You may understand something yourself, but to make it understandable to other people takes a real gift.”