Do States with Professional Sports Teams Have Lower Suicide Rates?

The author examines six age-group specific suicide rates in 2016 between states (in the continental United States) with and without professional sports teams in baseball [MLB], football [NFL], hockey [NHL], and basketball [NBA]. States with at least one team in baseball or football have significantly lower suicide rates among adults in all six age groups (over 20 years of age). States with at least one hockey team have significantly lower suicide rates for all adults over the age of 20, except the oldest age group (adults 65 years of age or over). The results are weakest for states with at least one basketball team. Adults only between 25 and 44 years of age and 65 years of age or over have significantly lower suicide rates with at least one NBA team.

Has Tom Brady Passed His Prime?

The author examines the career passing statistics of Tom Brady (2000 to present), quarterback for the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). In the categories of completions, attempts, completion percentage, passing yards, yards per attempt, touchdowns, and interceptions, there is no evidence of decline in per game averages since 2008 (when he tore his ACL) relative to his seven seasons as a starter before 2008. Moreover, there is no evidence of any statistically discernible performance change in his most recent four seasons as a starter relative to the three prior seasons. His consistency based on the coefficient of variation in games won is marginally better than his consistency in games lost, with one notable exception. Tom Brady’s interceptions per game were more consistent during losses than they were during wins.

Analysis of Water Pipeline Breaks

This study explores the arrivals of water pipeline break failures. The aim is to assist the facility manager in the decision making process. Based on characteristics of the data set ranging from 2011 to 2014, two steps of analysis were presented in the paper. This first step is the analysis of partially complete data set (2011 data). The 2-sample KS test is adopted to check the similarity between this data set and the entire data set with no underlying distribution implied. In order to conduct the reliability analysis, the Weibull distribution is adopted to evaluate the data. For annual data set, the 2-parameter Weibull distribution fits data sets pretty well. The shape parameters are a little greater than 1, indicating a slightly increasing arrival rate of such failures. For the entire data set, the 3-parameter Weibull tends to fit the data better than the 2-parameter Weibull. The shape parameter is well above 1, indicating an increasing arrival rate of the failures. To eliminate the impact of missing points for the 2011 data set, data from 2012 to 2014 were also considered as a new set, the Weibull distribution generated a decent fitting. The shape parameter is a little greater than 1. Therefore, there is a slightly increasing arrival rate of those pipeline failures. Results from this study provide decision makers valuable information in terms of whether additional efforts shall be made to enhance the system’s performance in order to reduce the failure rate.