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Unread 17-01-2012, 07:53
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Chris Hibner Chris Hibner is offline
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Re: Basketball Strategy Question

For the high school students who haven't had probability and statistics yet: sorry. There has been a number of mentions of "expected value" without any explaination. I'm sure wikipedia would clear that up with a search, but here's the quick explanation of it:

Expected value is used in probability. It means basically "how many points can you expect PER SHOT".

Mathematically, it is the probability multiplied by the value.

For example: in basketball, it's typical for a team to make 50% of their two point shots (probability of 0.5), and 40% of their three-pointers (probability of 0.4). Then the two types of shots have the following expected values:

Two pointer = 0.5 * 2 points => 1 point

Three pointer = 0.4 * 3 points => 1.2 points

This shows that the expected value of the three point shot is higher, which means teams should be taking more threes and less twos. This says that you're expected to score 20% more points for each trip down the court by using the three. In a game that averages 100 points, taking nothing but threes should theoretically score you 20 more points than if you took only two pointers.

Anyway, back to the discussion.
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Last edited by Chris Hibner : 17-01-2012 at 07:59.