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TEACHING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF STATISTICS WITH SPORTS DATA: SHOULD TEAMS WALK OR PITCH TO BARRY BONDS?

Sports data are commonly used to present topics from introductory statistics, such as exploratory data analysis and probability. They also can illustrate more subtle and complex statistical issues, such as selecting appropriate variables, making casual inferences from observational data, and specifying appropriate inferential populations. In this paper, I discuss how sports data can be used to engage students on such fundamental aspects of data analysis. I frame the discussion around the question posed in the title, a question which has generated much debate among baseball enthusiasts.