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Baseball players with the initial “K” do not strike out more often

Author

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  • B. D. McCullough
  • Thomas McWilliams

Abstract

It has been claimed that baseball players whose first or last name begins with the letter K have a tendency to strike out more than players whose initials do not contain the letter K. This “result” was achieved by a naive application of statistical methods. We show that this result is a spurious statistical artifact that can be reversed by the use of only slightly less naive statistical methods. We also show that other letters have larger and/or more significant effects than the letter K. Finally, we show that the original study applied the wrong statistical test and tested the hypothesis incorrectly. When these errors are corrected, most of the letters of the alphabet have a statistically significant strikeout effect.

Suggested Citation

  • B. D. McCullough & Thomas McWilliams, 2010. "Baseball players with the initial “K” do not strike out more often," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6), pages 881-891.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:japsta:v:37:y:2010:i:6:p:881-891
    DOI: 10.1080/02664760902889965
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    Cited by:

    1. George Doorn & Bryan Paton & Charles Spence, 2016. "Is J the new K? Initial letters and brand names," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 23(6), pages 666-678, November.
    2. O'Leary, Daniel E., 2017. "Crowd performance in prediction of the World Cup 2014," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 260(2), pages 715-724.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    name-letter effect; spurious correlation;

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