Repeatable and Replicable (Approaching)_01

“Strike three!” yells the umpire as the batter takes his final swing of the game. The crowd cheers for the winning team. As for the batter, he returns to the dugout. He was two for four this night. This was certainly not his best game but not his worst either. Tomorrow is another game in different town. He hopes to play better tomorrow. He has good reason to think this way. Tomorrow, his team will play in a different stadium. In this other stadium, he has enjoyed much success during his career. Why does he feel so confident his chances will improve tomorrow?

Baseball is fun to play and to watch. As America’s favorite sport, most of us know quite a bit about the game. It is not by chance that some talk about the science of baseball. Some fans take this knowledge to extremes. They know all about the players. They memorize details about how well they bat and how many bases they steal each year. They record all this information and use it to compare different players. In fact, players’ paychecks are determined using this information.

All new Major League players get recruited based on data. Baseball scouts are people who use data to find talented young players. A baseball scout records and analyzes this data to find new Major League players. Believe it or not, keeping track of ball players is like doing Science!

In baseball, players get to bat many times in a game. They also have many chances at bat throughout the season. However, they do not always play their games in the same place. Just like coaches who run drills again and again, scientists run their tests over and over again. Sometimes, scientists in other locations will try to reproduce, or replicate, the same experiment. Like in baseball, scientific data is collected many times in one location. It is also collected in other locations.