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Activity Number: 473 - For the Love of the Game: Applications of Statistics in Sports
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Wednesday, July 31, 2019 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Sports
Abstract #307084 Presentation
Title: Assessing Referee Bias in College Basketball
Author(s): Joshua Patrick*
Companies: Baylor University
Keywords: logistic regression; bagplot; college basketball; referee bias
Abstract:

The effect of officiating on the outcomes of games has long been a favorite excuse of sports fans for the lack of success of their teams. After a loss, it is easier to blame the officials than examine any other aspect of the game. When a school plays and loses to one of the college basketball "blue bloods" (schools that have had a long history of success which include Duke, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, UNC, and UCLA) the fans will likely express some bias for these schools by the referees. We examine this bias by taking into account the joint distribution of fouls called by each referee and the fouls committed by each team. We use data starting in the 2010-2011 season and ending in the 2017-2018 season. We also explore the effect on wins due to any bias via a logistic regression fit.


Authors who are presenting talks have a * after their name.

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