question: Eddie Epstein was one of the pioneers of the empirical analysis of what sport?
answer: baseball
context: Title: Runoff curve number
  Passage: The runoff curve number (also called a curve number or simply CN) is an empirical parameter used in hydrology for predicting direct runoff or infiltration from rainfall excess.  The curve number method was developed by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, which was formerly called the "Soil Conservation Service" or "SCS" — the number is still popularly known as a "SCS runoff curve number" in the literature.  The runoff curve number was developed from an empirical analysis of runoff from small catchments and hillslope plots monitored by the USDA.  It is widely used and is an efficient method for determining the approximate amount of direct runoff from a rainfall event in a particular area.
  Title: Nicolaas Wilhelmus Posthumus
  Passage: Nicolaas Wilhelmus Posthumus or N.W. Posthumus (February 26, 1880 in Amsterdam – April 18, 1960 in Bussum) was a Dutch economic historian and political scientist.  In 1915, he founded and published the Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek—a yearly collection of primary source documents and empirical analysis of Dutch merchant records.  Following the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, Posthumus founded the International Institute of Social History in 1935 as a place to retain socialist documents and histories safe from the Nazi regime and other governments which might exert control over them.  When Germany invaded the Netherlands the activities of the institute were disrupted.  He was dismissed in 1942 by the government of the occupied Netherlands and returned to his post only following the war.  During the war he managed to publish "Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland.  Vol.  i", an exhaustive empirical study of market prices and rates of exchange in Amsterdam from the 16th century until the First World War.  The work was favorably received and remains his most widely cited to date.
  Title: The Analysis of Verbal Behavior
  Passage: The Analysis of Verbal Behavior (TAVB) is a scientific journal that was established in 1982 as a peer-reviewed psychology journal.  It publishes research in conceptual and empirical analysis of verbal behavior and problems of social importance.
  Title: Actor–network theory
  Passage: Actor–network theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological approach to social theory where everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationship.  It posits that nothing exists outside those relationships.  All the factors involved in a social situation are on the same level, and thus there are no external social forces beyond what and how the network participants interact at present.  Thus, objects, ideas, processes, and any other relevant factors are seen as just as important in creating social situations as humans.  ANT holds that social forces do not exist in themselves, and therefore cannot be used to explain social phenomena.  Instead, strictly empirical analysis should be undertaken to "describe" rather than "explain" social activity.  Only after this can one introduce the concept of social forces, and only as an abstract theoretical concept, not something which genuinely exists in the world.  The fundamental aim of ANT is to explore how networks are built or assembled and maintained to achieve a specific objective.  Although it is best known for its controversial insistence on the capacity of nonhumans to act or participate in systems or networks or both, ANT is also associated with forceful critiques of conventional and critical sociology.  Developed by science and technology studies (STS) scholars Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, the sociologist John Law, and others, it can more technically be described as a "material-semiotic" method.  This means that it maps relations that are simultaneously material (between things) and semiotic (between concepts).  It assumes that many relations are both material and semiotic.
  Title: The Early Admissions Game
  Passage: The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite is a 2004 book which concerns early admission (a form of college admissions in the United States).  The authors combine survey research with an empirical analysis of more than 500,000 applications to a number of colleges.  They conclude that taking advantage of early applications significantly improves one's chances of admission.
  Title: James C. Hathaway
  Passage: James Hathaway (born 1956) is an American-Canadian scholar of international refugee law and related aspects of human rights and public international law.  His work is regularly cited by the most senior courts of the common law world, and has played a pivotal role in the evolution of refugee studies scholarship .  Among his more critical achievements, Hathaway pioneered the now well-accepted understanding of refugee status as surrogate or substitute protection of human rights (The Law of Refugee Status, 2014); he authored the world's first comprehensive analysis of the human rights of refugees, merging doctrinal study of refugee and human rights law with empirical analysis of the state of refugee protection around the world (The Rights of Refugees under International Law, 2005); and he directed a multidisciplinary and global team of scholars and officials in an initiative to reconceive the structures of refugee protection more fairly to share burdens and responsibilities (Reconceiving International Refugee Law, 1997).
  Title: Eddie Epstein
  Passage: Eddie Epstein is one of the pioneers of the modern age of baseball analysis, or Sabermetrics.  He was Director of Research and Statistics for the Baltimore Orioles from 1988 to 1994 and Director of Baseball Operations for the San Diego Padres from 1995 to 1999.  He was President of his own baseball consulting company, EBC, Inc., from 2000 to 2011 and in that role consulted on baseball operations and player personnel matters for several major league teams, including the Cleveland Indians, Oakland A's, and Tampa Bay Rays.  He wrote the "1995 STATS Minor League Scouting Notebook," co-authored "Baseball Dynasties" with Rob Neyer, and wrote "Dominance"---the subject of which was the greatest NFL teams since 1950.
  Title: Engaged theory
  Passage: Engaged theory is a methodological framework for understanding social complexity.  It takes social life or social relations as its base category, with 'the social' always understood as grounded in 'the natural', including humans as embodied beings.  Engaged theory provides a framework that moves from detailed empirical analysis about things, people and processes in the world to abstract theory about the constitution and social framing of those things, people and processes.
  Title: Discrete choice
  Passage: In economics, discrete choice models, or qualitative choice models, describe, explain, and predict choices between two or more discrete alternatives, such as entering or not entering the labor market, or choosing between modes of transport.  Such choices contrast with standard consumption models in which the quantity of each good consumed is assumed to be a continuous variable.  In the continuous case, calculus methods (e.g. first-order conditions) can be used to determine the optimum amount chosen, and demand can be modeled empirically using regression analysis.  On the other hand, discrete choice analysis examines situations in which the potential outcomes are discrete, such that the optimum is not characterized by standard first-order conditions.  Thus, instead of examining “how much” as in problems with continuous choice variables, discrete choice analysis examines “which one.”  However, discrete choice analysis can also be used to examine the chosen quantity when only a few distinct quantities must be chosen from, such as the number of vehicles a household chooses to own and the number of minutes of telecommunications service a customer decides to purchase.  Techniques such as logistic regression and probit regression can be used for empirical analysis of discrete choice.
  Title: Sabermetrics
  Passage: Sabermetrics is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity.
citations: Eddie Epstein Sabermetrics