Sports betting stats part 2

Sports betting stats knowledge is as Howtobet.net has pointed out in a lot of articles one of the main skills needed to master sports betting. In this Sports betting stats article we seek to clarify a couple of bread and butter terms from the world of statistics as well as relevant terminology connected to these terms.

The difference between a population and a sample

When we and others use sports betting stats in one way or another we separate between these terms. You should spend five minutes of your life trying to understand the difference between these two terms. Doing that might avoid misunderstandings, potentially leading you astray on the path of losing bets and bankroll misery.

Population

In sports betting stats lingo a “population” refers to any and all objects within a group of objects (data) being studied. Any measurable characteristic of a population such as the arithmetic mean is called a parameter. In case you wonder; the arithmetic mean is simply an average value.

Population example

Say you want to measure the home and away win as well as the draw percentage in Europe’s top four soccer leagues. The result of the count would be your population, and the home win percentage would be a parameter. The draw percentage and the away percentage would be other parameters.

Sample

A sample in sports betting stats terminology is a subset of a population. Any descriptive measure of a sample is referred to as a statistic. A Sample statistic is used to estimate population parameters.

Sample example

Let’s use the home wins in Europe example again. Say you are feeling particularly lazy on the day of the data collection and decide to only collect data from the English Premier League and the German Bundesliga. This is now in effect a sample of the population (the four leagues). You use the statistics such as the percent of home wins to estimate the population parameter (the home win percentage in all the four leagues combined).

Wrapping it up

As you probably have realized by now; sports betting stats isn’t so hard to understand. We break things down for you in manageable dosages and give you relevant, yet simple to understand examples. If you feel like, then you find other Howtobet.net sports betting stats articles here:

• Sports betting stats - Part 1 - Introduction