MEDIA ADVISORY
The Economics of Baseball, hosted by New York Universitys Stern School of Business, will explore various current issues in baseball where statistics and operations research are used. The symposium, Wed., July 16, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Sterns Henry Kaufman Management Center (44 W. 4th Street, Room 3-55), will include: Heather Campbell, former vice president, media networks and brand integration, ESPN; Gary Hoenig, general manager of ESPN Publishing; Tampa Bay Rays Senior Vice President Michael Kalt; New York Times reporter Alan Schwarz; Baseball Prospectus columnist Nate Silver; Smith College Economics Professor Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball and Billions; and others.
Symposium talks include the following: Optimization of Player Selections in the MLB Draft; All-Star Games, Super Bowls, Playoffs and the Regular Season: Effects of Sporting Events on City Coffers; What Do Statistics Tell Us About Steroids?; and Baseball Cards and the Internet. NYU President John Sexton, who teaches an undergraduate course at NYU, Baseball as a Road to God, will give introductory remarks.
In August, NYU Stern Professor Jeffrey Simonoff will present his research, co-authored with NYU Stern Professor Gary Simon, on the home team advantage at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver. By studying college games played in locations where neither team was the home team, they were able to separate the advantage of the home location from the perceived advantage of the home team batting last and the impact of travel.
Reporters interested in attending the July 16 event must contact James Devitt, Office of Public Affairs, at 212.998.6808 or james.devitt@nyu.edu.
For more information, go to http://www.stern.nyu.edu/baseball or call 212.998.0452. The session is jointly sponsored by NYUs Stern School of Business, the American Statistical Associations Section on Statistics in Sports, and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Section on Operations Research in Sports.