But I Regress…

Dave Studeman — The Hardball Times

I always thought that Regression Analysis took its name from the fact that you start with the outputs and determine by regressing to see how important the inputs are, though I now have no idea whether that’s based on anything but my own magical thinking.

Dave Studeman’s story here is fascinating for the historical content (which has nothing to do with baseball, a little to do with statistics and much to do with other things) and because he does such clear work showing the dynamics of regression to the mean (which may well be the origin of the term) as they pertain to baseball.

At the end he references a story by Chone Smith about player projection which turns out to be an interesting rabbit hole in its own right, but that’s for another time.