Hutton,+J

Does the attendance MLB home games effect the number of wins in the 2009 and 2010 season? Will there be a strong correlation between the number of wins they had, and the number of people who attended?
 * __Part B - Question__**


 * __Variables__**
 * __Independant Variable -Number of fans in attendance__**
 * __Dependant Variable - Home winning percentage of all MLB teams__**

I predict that the attendance at MLB games will effect the number of wins in the 2009 and 2010 seasons because, from experience it is easier to play when the fans are supporting you and not the other team. This in turn makes the players want to play harder so their fans have something to cheer for which makes the teams pick up more wins. I believe the correlation will be positive moderate because the fans do help, but if the stadium is packed the team could still potentially just have a bad game.
 * __Part C - Hypothesis__**

**__Vs __**

Over the years, every one has been to watch their favourite sport and all they want to see if for their team to pick up a win. For me, I am looking at my favourite sport, baseball and in particular, Major League Baseball. Baseball is a sport that has tons of home games, and fan support comes a long way when the team is in a slump and looking for a big win. Over the years, every team has had a better record at home and I am going to find out if that is just a coincidence or if there is a correlation between the winning percentage and the average number of fans each MLB team has.
 * __Background Information__**

Due to my raw data, this could very well be considered a measurement bias as I am only looking at two years. I believe that using more than 2 years would of made it harder to find the trends I am searching for, but this measurement bias will not effect the results because I believe that fan attendance and number of wins at home will stay constant throughout the years. This could be the only type of bias because I never used any surveys and because of my topic, all I needed was statistics about wins and losses as well as fan attendance for those games. Finding my data from reliable sources such as the ESPN and MLB websites. The sampling size is all 30 MLB teams. There is no type of response bias here because it is just statistics so no groups were over used or under used.
 * __Part D - Raw Data__**
 * __Measurement Bias__**

__**One Variable Data Analysis**__


 * 2 variable data graphs **

__**Correlation Coeffient**__ 2009 - This means that in 2009 it was a Positive Moderate correlation between average fan attendance per team and their respective winning percentage.
 * 0.4107**

2010 - This means that in 2010 it was also a Positive Moderate correlation between average fan attendance per team and their respective winning percentage.
 * 0.4994**



__**Conclusion**__ Based on all the data compiled, it is clear that there is a correlation between fan attendance and home winning percentage. There is a strong moderate correlation between the two variables, which is what I hypothesized from the start. There are outliers such as the LA Dodgers in the 2010 season had the highest fan support but only a mediocre winning percentage. This is because bigger markets will draw more fans no matter how good the team is. Small markets such as Tampa Bay, have a good winning percentage but don't draw as many fans because of their smaller market. Teams that continuously make the playoffs and have winning records, will always draw lots of fans because fans want to see their team win and when teams are winning, a lot of people start to become a fan. Trends like this do fail, especially in the playoffs where people are playing with more intensity. For example, the Tampa Bay Rays in the first round of playoffs lost all three of their home games and were beaten out of the playoffs with their fans booing them. This shows that fan support can have a negative effect on the outcomes of games and more importantly playoff series.

It also has a very good effect on some playoff teams. For example, the San Francisco Giants won the world series in 2010 recieving mediocre fan attendance throughout the regular season but in the playoffs they were sold out almost every game which in turn really helped them along to win the championship. The data shows that there is a clear trend in the two variables, but if some people don't believe the data, there are also playoff examples where fan attendance have been key components to winning and losing.

2010 MLB Attendance. (2010, October 30). In //ESPN//. Retrieved January 7, 2011, from [] 2009 MLB Attendance. (2009, October 30). In //ESPN//. Retrieved January 7, 2011, from [] 2010 MLB Regular Season Standings. (2010, October 30). In //ESPN//. Retrieved January 7, 2011, from [] 2009 MLB Regular Season Standings. (2009, October 30). In //ESPN//. Retrieved January 7, 2011, from http://espn.go.com/mlb/standings/_/year/2009
 * __BIbliography__**