When Big Data Was Small

My Life in Baseball Analytics and Drug Design

Richard D. Cramer

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781496215765
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Richard D. Cramer has been doing baseball analytics for just about as long as anyone alive, even before the term "sabermetrics" existed. He started analyzing baseball statistics as a hobby in the mid-1960s, not long after graduating from Harvard and MIT. He was a research scientist for SmithKline and in his spare time used his work computer to test his theories about baseball statistics. One of his earliest discoveries was that clutch hitting—then one of the most sacred pieces of received wisdom in the game—didn't really exist. In When Big Data Was Small Cramer recounts his life and remarkable contributions to baseball knowledge. In 1971 Cramer learned about the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and began working with Pete Palmer, whose statistical work is credited with providing the foundation on which SABR is built. Cramer cofounded STATS Inc.and began working with the Houston Astros, Oakland A's, Yankees, and White Sox, with the help of his new Apple II computer. Yet for Cramer baseball was always a side interest, even if a very intense one for most of the last forty years. His main occupation, which involved other "big data" activities, was that of a chemist who pioneered the use of specialized analytics, often known as computer-aided drug discovery, to help guide the development of pharmaceutical drugs. After a decade-long hiatus, Cramer returned to baseball analytics in 2004 and has done important work with Retrosheet since then. When Big Data Was Small is the story of the earliest days of baseball analytics and computer-aided drug discovery.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Forewordn
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Setting the Stage
• 2. Baseball and Science Surface
• 3. College
• 4. Graduate School and the 1960s Computer
• 5. Industrial Synthetic Chemist
• 6. Harvard’s Research Computer
• 7. Computer-Aided Drug Discovery
• 8. Sabermetrics’ Infancy
• 9. Scientific Recognition
• 10. Twists of Fate
• 11. Birth of STATS Inc.
• 12. White Sox and Yankees
• 13. Scientific Career Transition
• 14. Rebirth of STATS Inc.
• 15. Comparative Molecular Field Analysis
• 16. STATS Soars
• 17. Cheerlessness and Lyme Disease
• 18. The Rise and Fall of TRPS
• 19. Repudiated by STATS
• 20. Tidying Up
• 21. In My Humble Opinion
• 22. Summing Up
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About Richard D. Cramer
• About John Thorn