Statistical Analysis of Basketball Teams Through Normal Distribution and R Programming

Abstract

Basketball has existed for almost 130 years, becoming one of the most famous sports worldwide by affecting millions of lives and having national and global tournaments. With the general improvement of people's concern and love for sports competition, sports analytics’ role will become more prominent. Hence, this paper combines the relevant knowledge of statistics and typical basketball competition cases from NBA, expounding the application of statistics in sports competition. The paper first examines the importance of normal distribution (also called Gaussian distribution) in statistics through its probability density function and the function's graph. The function has two parameters: the mean for the maximum and standard deviation for the distance away from the mean[1]. By compiling datasets of past teams and individuals for their basketball performances and making simple calculations of their standard deviation and mean, the paper constructs normal distribution graphs using the R programming language. Finally, the paper examines the Real Plus-Minus value and its importance in basketball.