About the Author

Sports Analytics Press

This textbook was produced by Sports Analytics Press, a collaborative team of quantitative analysts, data scientists, and sports betting professionals united by a shared conviction: that rigorous analytical thinking can transform how we understand, engage with, and profit from sports.

The Sports Analytics Press team brings together decades of combined experience spanning multiple disciplines and industries. Our contributors include former quantitative traders who applied signal processing and risk management techniques on Wall Street before turning their attention to sports markets; academic statisticians whose research on prediction, calibration, and causal inference has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals; machine learning engineers who have built production systems for real-time prediction at scale; and professional sports bettors who have sustained profitable operations across multiple sports and market cycles.

What unites this diverse group is a belief that sports betting, properly approached, sits at one of the most intellectually rich intersections in applied mathematics. It demands probability theory, statistics, machine learning, optimization, behavioral economics, domain expertise, and psychological discipline --- all operating simultaneously under genuine financial stakes. Few other domains offer this combination of analytical depth and immediate, measurable feedback.

The genesis of this textbook was a recognition that while excellent resources existed for individual components --- probability theory, machine learning, sports analytics, and risk management each have their own literatures --- no single resource integrated these disciplines into a coherent framework specifically designed for the quantitative sports bettor. Students and practitioners were forced to assemble their education piecemeal, translating concepts from finance, statistics, and computer science into the betting context on their own. This textbook aims to bridge that gap.

Our editorial philosophy reflects the team's collective experience: we prioritize clarity over complexity, practical applicability over theoretical purity, and honest assessment of limitations over overconfident claims. Every model presented in this book has been tested against real or realistic data. Every strategy has been evaluated with the same rigor we would apply to our own capital. Where the evidence is uncertain, we say so. Where common practices are flawed, we explain why.

The team maintains active involvement in the sports analytics community through conference presentations, open-source software contributions, and ongoing research collaborations with academic institutions. We believe that the field advances fastest when knowledge is shared openly and subjected to rigorous peer scrutiny.

Sports Analytics Press is based in the United States and operates at the intersection of academia and industry. Our work is informed by but independent of any sportsbook, betting syndicate, or gambling operator. The analyses and opinions expressed in this textbook are entirely our own.

We welcome correspondence from readers, researchers, and practitioners. Corrections, suggestions, and constructive criticism improve future editions and are gratefully received.

Sports Analytics Press Quantitative Methods for the Modern Bettor