6 CHAPTER 1. WHAT IS DATA SCIENCE?

Figure 1.2: Personal information on every major league baseball player is avail-
able at http://www.baseball-reference.com.

and awards as shown in Figure 1.1.

But more than just statistics, there is metadata on the life and careers of all
the people who have ever played major league baseball, as shown in Figure 1.2.
We get the vital statistics of each player (height, weight, handedness) and their
lifespan (when/where they were born and died). We also get salary information
(how much each player got paid every season) and transaction data (how did
they get to be the property of each team they played for).
Now, I realize that many of you do not have the slightest knowledge of or
interest in baseball. This sport is somewhat reminiscent of cricket, if that helps.
But remember that as a data scientist, it is your job to be interested in the
world around you. Think of this as chance to learn something.
So what interesting questions can you answer with this baseball data set?
Try to write down five questions before moving on. Don’t worry, I will wait here
for you to finish.

The most obvious types of questions to answer with this data are directly
related to baseball:

• How can we best measure an individual player’s skill or value?

• How fairly do trades between teams generally work out?
• What is the general trajectory of player’s performance level as they mature
and age?
• To what extent does batting performance correlate with position played?
For example, are outfielders really better hitters than infielders?

These are interesting questions. But even more interesting are questions
about demographic and social issues. Almost 20,000 major league baseball play-