The collection of statistics in sports and how they are used. Please also tag questions with the sport or sports being referred to.
Within sports, "statistics" refers to the collection of data about individual or team performance and how that data can be used to predict future performance. Examples include things like:
- Batting average in baseball
- Metres run per match in (association) football
- The Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method in cricket
In recent years, "advanced statistics" such as baseball's "wins above replacement" (WAR) metric have been developed and are claimed to give a better indication of future performance than traditional statistics such as batting average.
Any statistics are typically defined only within the context of a specific sport (or group of closely related sports) and sometimes only in a specific ruleset.
