December 2020: Professor Ian McHale

In this talk Professor McHale will discuss the evolution of the relationship between
sport and statistics. Mainly focussed around football, he will look at how statistical
results were incorrectly interpreted, resulting in the ‘longball’ approach used by
England for decades, before talking about the ‘Moneyball’ revolution and the current
state of affairs in global sports. Finally, Professor McHale will present research on
using analytics to estimate the impact of recruitment decisions on the performance of
a team.

Ian McHale is Professor of Sports Analytics at the University of Liverpool. He was
founding Chair of the Statistics in Sports Section of the Royal Statistical Society and
is Associate Editor for the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society – Series A, and the
International Journal of Forecasting. Ian’s research interests lie in statistics in sport,
and the analysis of gambling markets and issues relating to gambling. Ian has
published research on a wide variety of topics including ranking methods in sport;
forecasting results in football, tennis, cricket and golf; assessment of changes to
gambling regulation; and the behaviour of lottery players.