Hauber Summer Research: 2004

Mathematical Sciences Department

Summer 2003 Page

Taylor Graff (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Richard Auer)

Every athlete in professional team-sports has a salary and has statistics which track performance. Most fans question whether or not the two have a strong relationship, since it is fans who are the ones who indirectly pay these athletes? In the United States there are four salaried leagues which, by far, attract the most money and attention: the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL. In which of these four leagues does the salaries that the players are paid best reflect the performance that they show on the field? Data for all starters in each sport from the season which ended in 2002 was used in each sport to conduct an observational study to determine the inter-sport ranking of the intra-sport correspondence between performance and salary. Models were developed using stepwise regression to gain the set of absolute residual for all athletes in the data. These residuals adjusted to account for a sport’s average salary and then an ANOVA was performed on the adjusted absolute residuals which yielded the order (from strongest relationship to weakest): NHL, NBA, MLB, NFL.