Wayne L. Winston is the John and Esther Reese Professor of Decision Sciences at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. He has been a consultant to major corporate and sports organizations, including USA Diving and the Dallas Mavericks.

At IU, Winston teaches a statistics class once attended by an undergrad named Mark Cuban. When the two met up again with Cuban owner of the Dallas Mavericks, he charged Winston to create a better way to rate players. Winston enlisted the help of Jeff Sagarin, who is better known for his NCAA basketball and football rating systems. Using Cuban's access, they were able to get complete NBA play-by-play data and use this to create a modified plus-minus system which adjusts for the quality of team mates and opponents.

In his book Mathletics, Wayne Winston describes the mathematical methods that top coaches and managers use to evaluate players and improve team performance, and gives math enthusiasts the practical tools they need to enhance their understanding and enjoyment of their favorite sports--and maybe even gain the outside edge to winning bets. Mathletics blends fun math problems with sports stories of actual games, teams, and players, along with personal anecdotes from Winston's work as a sports consultant. Winston uses easy-to-read tables and illustrations to illuminate the techniques and ideas he presents, and all the necessary math concepts--such as arithmetic, basic statistics and probability, and Monte Carlo simulations--are fully explained in the examples.