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Previous Columns  Tony PhillipsTony Phillips' Take on Math in
the Media A monthly survey of math news  June 2004  *The
Pythagorean Theorem of Baseball has just been simplified. This
news from the web-based Science Daily for March 30, 2004. The
original PTOB is due to the baseball statistician and conoisseur
Bill James. It estimates a team's winning chances in terms of
two numbers: Rs, the number of runs scored, and Ra, the number
of runs allowed. The formula is              Rs2 P  =
------------ .         Rs2 + Ra2   Suppose that in 12 games your
team scored 72 hits and allowed 64 hits. The PTOB gives P = .56
so it should have won 7 games and lost 5. If it won more than 7,
it is "overperforming," if less, then "underperforming." This is
supposed to help in predicting future performance.     The
simplification is due to Michael Jones and Linda Tappin
(Montclair State University). Their formula runs   P  =  0.5 +
β(Rs - Ra),  where β is a constant, "c