Abstract
In 2004, Dean Oliver released a book titled Basketball on Paper. This book was written with the idea of giving coaches, fans, and players a bit of a different way to look at basketball. Through statistics and other evaluation metrics Oliver wanted to pin down what really contributes to winning basketball games. So he created his four factors of basketball: effective field goal percentage, offensive rebounding percentage, turnover percentage, and free throw rate. He argues that if a team can control these four aspects of a game, they have a very good chance of winning. Since this book was released, a lot has changed in the sport of basketball. I want to see if these four factors still hold up as the foundation of successful basketball, and if we can predict the outcomes of games based on these four factors.
Advisor
Pasteur, Drew
Department
Mathematics
Recommended Citation
Henke, Luke, "What Wins Basketball Games? An Analysis of Dean Oliver's Four Factors of Basketball, Two Decades Later" (2023). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 10546.
https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/10546
Disciplines
Algebra | Analysis | Applied Statistics | Data Science | Multivariate Analysis | Numerical Analysis and Computation | Other Mathematics | Statistical Models
Keywords
basketball, Dean Oliver, Linear Model, Linear Regression, Analysis, Linear Algebra
Publication Date
2023
Degree Granted
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type
Senior Independent Study Thesis
© Copyright 2023 Luke Henke