Punching a Ticket to Cooperstown

ABSTRACT When exposed to principal components analysis for the first time, students can sometimes miss the primary purpose of the analysis. Often the focus is solely on data reduction and what to do after the dimensions of the data have been reduced is ignored. The datasets discussed here can be used as an in-class example, a homework assignment, or a written project, with a focus in this article as an in-class example. The data give the students an opportunity to perform principal components analysis and follow-up analyses on a real dataset that is not necessarily the easiest to handle