December 12, 2006
Curling by the Numbers
Michael Eglinski sends along this link as Bob Weeks profiles the Bill James of curling.
If you really want to understand how Glenn Howard won last week's Grand Slam of Curling event, the Home Hardware Masters, you should know that his hammer efficiency in the bonspiel was a remarkable 35%. And his force efficiency was a stunning 68%.
This shouldn't come as much of a surprise as Howard's team is ranked No.1 in Canada, statistically speaking.
These numbers and rankings might not mean anything to most curling fans, but if Dallas Bittle has his way, that will soon change.
Bittle, along with his partner Gerry Geurts, are to curling what Bill James is to baseball. For the past few years, they have been developing an entirely new way of looking at curling through statistics.
But please, don't call them statisticians. They're researchers of the game.
"We found there was a void in reporting results and how they were reported," Bittle explained. "We felt there was a need for a better statistical analysis."
See, I told you curling was like baseball!
Posted by David Pinto at
10:23 PM
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Curling's a fun sport to play. It's a pretty big sport in Canada, every small town has a curling rink. But it's so, so, so boring to watch (it's on tv a fair bit in Canada, sadly).
Since I couldn't skate as a kid I curled... too bad my knee complains about that to this day...