Data Analysis of World Series

Games
By Autumn Jones
Discrete Math Semester 1
2014-2015

Introduction:
Acting as the president of CBS, I am submitting a bid on televising
the World Series. Depending on how much advertising revenue I
expect to receive, I will ultimately decide how much to bid. To assist
me in my calculations, I will go over past years to see how many
games were played previously on a 4 to 7 basis. This will help me to
make a bid and to justify that bid accordingly.

Data:
x

Frequency

4
5
6
7

21
24
24
37

Relative
Frequency
21/106= .19
24/106= .22
24/106= .22
37/106= .34

Number of Games in a World Series

40
35

37

30
25
Frequency 20
15

24

21

24

10
5
0

Number of Games

The
distribution for both the frequency and relative frequency histogram is
skewed left.

Number of Games in a World Series

0.4

0.35

4
0.34

0.3
0.25
Relative Frequency

0.2
0.15

0.22

0.19

0.22

0.1
0.05
0
Number of Games

To find the mean of the data, the sum of how many games in each
years World Series is divided by the total years given.
607 games/106 years= 5.7
Therefore, 5.7 is the mean.
x
4
5
6
7

f
21
24
24
37
f=106

xf
84
120
144
259
xf=607/1
06
=5.7

(x- x )
-1.7
-0.7
.3
1.3

(x- x )2
2.89
.49
.09
1.69

(x- x )2f
60.69
11.76
2.16
62.53
(x-x
)2f=137.1
4

xf
607
=
=5.7
n
106
137.14
137.14
variance=
=
=1.3
n1
105
n=106

x =5.7
deviation=

standard

1.3 =1.14

median: 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 7
777777777777777777777777777777777777
= middle of data
Therefore, the median value is 6.

range= highest value-lowest value= 7-4 =3

Therefore, the range of the data is 3.

44444444444444444444455555555555555555
55555556666666666666666666666666777777
7777777777777777777777777777777
lo- 4
Q1- 5
M- 6
Q3- 7
hi- 7

Bell Shaped Curve

1.8
8.3

3.1
9.6

4.4

5.7

68%
95%
99.7
%

Center and Spread of Data:

The purpose of a mean when describing data is the central value of
a set of numbers. The mean is a satisfactory way to describe the data
because 5.7 is almost exactly between 4 and 7. The mean is meant to
describe the center well and 5.7 does just that.
Another way to describe the center of the data is to calculate the
median. The center of a distribution is located at the median of the

distribution. This is the point where about half of the observations are
on either side. In this case, 6 is the median. The median does not do as
good of a job as describing the center of data because in comparison
to 5.7, 5.7 is closer to the middle of 4 and 7. Mode can also be used to
describe the center of data. The mode for this set of data would be 7,
which is not as accurate as using mean or median.
The standard deviations purpose is to show the spread of data. For
this set of data, standard deviation is 1.14. This number is a good way
to describe the spread of data because all the data (represented by x
(i.e. 4, 5, 6, 7)) is one away from each other and 1.14 is very close to
this.
A different way to show the spread of the data is range. Range is the
difference between the highest and lowest value. It is not necessarily a
better way to describe the spread of data because in this data set the
range is 3 which is farther away from 1. The second way to show the
spread of data is by using quartiles.

Probability:
The probability is the likelihood of an event to occur. The following
calculates the probability of playing 4 games, 5 games, 6 games, and 7
games.
sample of years
frequency

4
= 0.038
106
7
= 0.066
106

5
= 0.047
106

6
= 0.057
106

The highest probability for this set of data is for 7 games to occur,
although the probability for all numbers is fairly low.

If each game aired on television earns about 2 million dollars of

advertising revenue then:
the least amount of revenue is

2 million x 4 games= 8 million dollars in advertising revenue

the most amount of revenue is
2 million x 7 games= 14 million dollars in advertising revenue

Bidding:
I would be willing to bid five million dollars to the baseball league for
the exclusive rights to televise the World Series. Over the past 106
years, an average of 5.7 games has been played each year (this can
estimate to 6 games). If multiplied, 2 million dollars times 6 games
would be 12 million dollars. The 5 million dollars bid to the major
league would be subtracted from the 12 million in revenue. Therefore,
there would be a profit of 7 million dollars, which is more than the cost
of the bid.

Conclusion:
After calculating the frequency, center, spread, and probability
for the past years of World Series games, I figured out a justified bid to
pay for the exclusive rights to televise the World Series. The revenue
for the games was found which helped in the uncovering of the best
bid possible. I decided that my best bet is to bid around 5 million
dollars because I will most likely make a 7 million dollar profit.