MSNBC - July. 2, 2008
Any fan who attends an Atlanta Braves game knows the attendance quiz that appears for each home game on the stadium's giant scoreboard.Team executives are playing the same game, but with a bit more sophistication and more at stake than entertainment. The result of several months' work, the Braves' "Attendance Projection Module" has worked to within 3 percent and 5 percent accuracy this season, twice coming within 100 seats of predicting the actual attendance and once as close as 45.. . Schiller first approached a member of his sales staff, Ryan McFerrin, with the task of coming up with such a model last August. While juggling the project along with his other duties in the team's ticket sales department, McFerrin, an industrial design major who graduated from GEORGIA TECH in 2005, needed two months to complete the "Attendance Projection Module."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25489092/