What Do Sport Statisticians Do?

When sports fans see a player's numbers on the television or newspaper, the displayed statistics is the result of a sports statistician's research and observations. The field of sports statistics allures avid sports followers since it allows them to get paid for following their team closely -- something they do anyway. However, most sports statisticians work part-time as professionals since only a limited amount of full-time sport statistician jobs exist.

  1. Record Stats

    • At a sporting event, sports statisticians must watch the game in its entirety to record each players stats. If the sports statistician works for a broadcasting or radio network, they must provide individual and team statistics to the networks' commentators, who are responsible for relaying the stats to the audience. Sports statisticians usually come up with stats during game intervals such as halftime or timeouts for basketball and football. For baseball games, statisticians produce results in between innings. After a game is over, sports statisticians compare their data with play-by-play accounts to see if their recordings are accurate.

    Attendance

    • Professional sports franchise and collegiate athletic departments often employ statisticians to add up the attendance of their games. These statisticians also find out the total amount of people who attended games for the team throughout the year and the probability on how many tickets will be sold in the following year. Announcing a team's attendance record is important to franchises or athletic departments since it displays the strength, or lack thereof, of their fan base and stream of monies from ticket sales.

    Gathering Data

    • In between games, sports statisticians gather data from around a sports league. This duty allows statisticians to reveal the top players and teams, in a statistical sense. Knowing the teams stats provides commentators and fans with an idea on what a team's strengths and weaknesses are. At the end of the season, a team or player's stats is taken in consideration for who wins awards such as Most Valuable Player or Coach of the Year.

    Teach

    • While sports statisticians are passionate about the sport they cover, most sports statisticians do not work in this field full-time. Teaching college-level statistics is an occupational option for part-time sports statisticians. College professors can use sports statistics as a method for teaching their class. Since sports are popular among many young people, sports statisticians can use their interest to help them understand statistics in general.

    Education

    • Most statistician jobs require employees to have a masters degree in the field of mathematics or statistics. When collecting statistical data, sports statisticians utilize various types of math, ranging from simple addition or subtraction methods to calculus and probability theory. The calculus and probability theory comes in handy when sports statistician attempt to predict the outcome of a player or team's season. Also, it would behoove a sports statistician to take computer science classes since statistical software is used for collecting data.