Creed Mangrum
MIT EECS Undergraduate Research and Innovation Scholar
Major League Baseball Beat the Streak: Algorithmic and Statistical Analysis Approach
2013–2014
Dennis M. Freeman
Baseball is the great American pastime. It is a game filled with unmatched statistical complexity in the sports world and provides an ideal space for algorithmic statistical analyses of big data. One of the most improbable records in sports is Joe DiMaggios 56-game hit streak in 1941. Major League Baseball has sponsored an online game called Beat the Streak. Anyone can select one or two players a day. If all players chosen get a hit, their streak continues. Since 2005, not a single person has reached a 50 game streak. Less than .00001% of users have reached a 40-game streak. This project aims to synthesize massive amounts of data to indicate the best players to select to Beat the Streak.
I was hitting before I could walk and was a Red Sox fan before I could talk. I hit .408 my sophomore year for MIT. I have a deep background in statistics and probability. More valuable, is my understanding of baseball inside and out. Big Data is the future of many fields, including medicine. As a computer science and biology major, I have learned how computation is revolutionizing our society.