2012/08/08 by Kevin Dayaratna, Kevin D. Dayaratna, Steven J. Miller +2
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Engineering · Mathematics · #Applications (stat.AP) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Sports Analytics and Performance #Sports Dynamics and Biomechanics #stat.AP
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1208.1725
21 pages, 4 figures; Forthcoming in The Hockey Research Journal: A Publication of the Society for International Hockey Research, 2012/13
openalex publication_date 2012/08/08 · arxiv created 2013/10/18 · arxiv updated 2013/10/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Originally devised for baseball, the Pythagorean Won-Loss formula estimates the percentage of games a team should have won at a particular point in a season. For decades, this formula had no mathematical justification. In 2006, Steven Miller provided a statistical derivation by making some heuristic assumptions about the distributions of runs scored and allowed by baseball teams. We make a similar set of assumptions about hockey teams and show that the formula is just as applicable to hockey as it is to baseball. We hope that this work spurs research in the use of the Pythagorean Won-Loss formula as an evaluative tool for sports outside baseball.