You are invited to a joint Communication Studies and Math/Computer/Data Science seminar on sports analytics Friday, March 10 at noon-1 p.m. in Norris 101. We are pleased to welcome to campus Dr. Albert Cohen, director of both the Actuarial Science and Sports Analytics Programs at Michigan State University. Dr. Cohen will present “Mathematical Models of Player Contract Valuation” about free agent contract pricing in Major League Baseball. He will discuss how teams properly compensate a player for their on-field efforts. In this brief talk, he will outline foundational tools first proposed by Scully (with the onset of MLB free agency in the 1970s) and expanded upon by Rockerbie and others. It will carry out two pricing examples and no previous quantitative finance or actuarial tools are needed. In fact, a little bit of multi-variable calculus and a willingness to apply it to sports is all that is needed to follow this talk.