Sports Analytics
Stat 306
Brad Hartlaub
Spring 2024
Online resources for review and new methods
Daily Agendas
- January 15 - Getting started
- Week 1 - Initial reading on sports injuries - you can also check out the articles in our Google Drive folder !Student Suggested Articles on the impact of injuries
- January 17 - Chapter 1
- January 19 - Presentations on sports injury articles
- Vaughn Hajra - Padded helmet shell covers in American football
- Jason Harmer - Role of subconcussion in repetritive mild tramatic brain injury
- Drake Lewis - NFL turf debate - (Follow up article)
- Taylor Womack - Health risks and musculoskeletal problems of elite mobile Esports players: a cross-sectional descriptive study
- Harshal Rukhaiyar - Acute tennis injuries in the recreational tennis player
- Ryan Oscherwitz - Outcomes of anterior cruciate ligament injuries to running backs and wide receivers in the NFL
- January 22
- Jackson Kennedy - Recurrent ACL tears in the NFL
- Parker Gibbons - Preventing Tommy John surgery - The indentification of trends in pitch selection, velocity, and spin rate before ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction in MLB pitchers
- Ian Weihe - Health consequences of youth sport specialization
- Anthony Testa - Career outlook and performance of professional athletes after achilles tendon rupture: a systematic review
- Ethan Liu - Comparison of outcomes based on graft type and tunnel configuration for primary ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction in professional baseball pitchers
- Megan Lieb - Return-to-sport and performance after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in NBA players
- Will Gibbs - Risk factors and predictors of subsequent ACL injury in either knee after ACL reconstruction
- Viet Dang - Performance and return to sport following rotator cuff surgery in professional baseball players
- January 24
- Benny Abeysekera - Concussion in amateur rugby union identified with the use of rapid visual screening tool
- Connor Moss - Epidemiology of patella tendinopathy in athletes and the general population
- Grant Culbertson - Ankle sprains in the NBA 2013-2014 through 2016-2017
- Andrew Mayer - Increasing burden of youth baseball elbow injuries in US emergency departments
- Victoria Hannaford - The effect of wearing soccer headgear on the head response in soccoer heading
- Malcolm Gaynor - Analysis of injuries and pitching performance between MLB and NPB
- Liam Rosengren - Performance and return to sport after achilles tendon repair in NFL players
- Subhan Bin Salik - Tennis specialization and consequences of injury/illness following retirement
- January 26 - wrap up articles on sports injuries
- Rafey Abbas - Incicence of injury for professional soccer players in the United States
- Chris Lee - Medical reaons behind player departures from male and female professional tennis competitions
- Faiz Rasool - Incidence of concussion and head impacts in Australian elite-level male and female cricketers after head impact protocol modifications
- Keegan Minahan - Risk of head injury associated with distinct head impact events in elite women's hockey
- Comments on Binney articles
- Group Activity on football articles
- January 29 - use class time for projects
- January 31 - Chapter 2
- February 2
- Taylor Womack and Viet Dang - Maximizing Fantasy Football Points
- Vaughn Hajra and Andrew Mayer -Performance Review: The Significcance of the NFL Combine
- Drake Lewis and Jason Harmer - The Effectiveness of NFL Defenses
- February 5
- Ethan Liu and Ryan Oscherwitz - Modeling NFL Salary Cap Allocation
- Chris Lee and Harshal Rukhaiyar - Jannik Sinner's Performance Predcition
- Faiz Rasool and Subhan Salik - Do Off-field Factors Influence Performance in the NFL
- February 7
- Victoria Hannaford and Megan Lieb - Quarterback Statistics and Team Rerformance in the NFL
- Anthony Testa and Ian Weihe - Father Time's Effect on Running Back Performance
- Parker Gibbons and Liam Rosengren - Predictive Power of the NFL Combine
- February 9
- Malcolm Gaynor and Will Gibbs - NFL Rest Days Effects on Injuries
- Rafey Abbas and Grant Culbertson - Crime in the NFL
- Jackson Kennedy and Connor Moss - Budget Football
- February 12
- Benny Abeysekera and Keegan Minahan - Does an NFL team’s positional allocation of resources significantly impact the team’s in-season performance?
- February 14 - lab time to work with your partner on basketball project
- February 16 - lab time to work with your partner on basketball project
- February 19 - lab time to work with your partner on basketball project
- February 21
- February 23
- February 26
- February 28 - Conversation with AP (Alexander Powell, Head of Quantitative Analysis & Development at Charlotte Hornets)
- March 1
- March 18
- March 20 - lab time for projects (basketball and baseball)
- March 22 - lab time for projects (basketball and baseball)
- March 25 - lab time for projects (basketball and baseball)
- March 27 - Peer reviews (in class) of basketball projects
- Problem 1 pairings
- Keegan and Taylor with Subhan
- Faiz and Viet with Drake and Will
- Problem 2 pairings
- Rafey with Victoria and Megan
- Problem 3 pairings
- Ryan and Ethan with Anthony and Ian with Malcolm and Parker
- Problem 4 pairings
- Benny and Jason with Chris and Harshal
- Connor and Liam with Grant
- Problem 5 pairings
- Andrew and Vaughn with Jackson
- March 29 - lab time for projects (basketball and baseball)
- April 1 - lab time for projects (basketball and baseball)
- April 3 - Basketball projects are due
- April 5
- April 8 - no class, enjoy the solar eclipse and work on your project
- April 10
- April 12
- April 15
- April 17
- April 19 lab time for projects
- April 22
- April 24
- April 26
- April 29
- May 1
- May 3 - indivdiual progress meetings and lab time for final projects
- May 7 - Final papers must be uploaded to your folder on Google Drive before 6:30 pm
Weekly Assignments
- HW #1 - for the first week
- The impact of injuries in sports - Post at least one article on CTE, concussions, or other injuries and the impact they have had on the sport of interest to you. Your pdf version of the article should be copied into the Student Suggested Articles on the impact of injuries folder on Google drive. Each student will briefly summarize their article over the next week. Please use the naming convention (your name)-Article Title.pdf.
- Read the Football articles posted in our Google Drive folder Stat306-S2024\!Football and be prepared to discuss them
- Your first group project will involve football (NFL or NCAA) so you may want to begin searching for articles, identifying data sources, and formulating your questions.
- HW #2 - due on Friday, January 26
- Read Binney_1.pdf and Binney_2.pdf in the folder !General-Miscellaneous\Articles and be prepared to discuss these wrap up articles with your peers
- Read the Football articles posted in our Google Drive folder Stat306-S2024\!Football and be prepared to discuss them
- Please complete your reading of Chapters 1 and 2 in our Machine Learning textbook before class
- HW #3 - due on Monday, January 29
- Your proposal for your first project dealing with football (NFL or NCAA) or player performance in some other sport is due on Monday, January 29. Your goal is to use multiple regression, ANOVA models with three or more variables, or some other multivariate technique to address a research question of interest to your and your partner. You should find an article related to your research question and real data from at least the last three years to provide a thorough analysis. Your presentation should be approximately 10 to 12 minutes in length, and you can share your materials (journal article, data, R code, and slides) with the entire class by creating a folder with your names under Football\Student Projects (or another Student Project folder if you look at player performance in a different sport) on our Google Drive folder. Your proposal should include a short description of your question(s) of interest, initial thoughts about appropriate models, and some preferred dates for your presentation.
- HW #4 - due on Wednesday, February 14
- Your proposal for our second project dealing with basketball (at any level - NBA, NCAA, G- League, D III, highschool, Olympics, etc.) is due on Wednesday, February 14. The goal of this project is to use multivariate statistical models and methods that you know and at least one machine learning method from our textbook (or another source) to address research questions of interest to you and your partner. You should find a peer-reviewed article related to your research question(s) of interest, and the data set that you use for your analysis must include at least three years of data. Your presentation should be 10 to 12 minutes in length, with a 3 to 5 minute Q&A session. There will be a hard cutoff at 15 minutes during this round of presentations. I would also like to encourage you to incorporate comments about any new R commands, functions, or packages into your presentation. A one page executive summary is required for this project. Please share your materials (journal article, data, R code, slides, and a one page executive summary) with the entire class 24 hours before your presentation by creating a folder with your names under Basketball\Student Projects on our Google Drive folder. Your proposal should include the names of the members of your group, a short description of your question(s) of interest, initial thoughts about appropriate analyses, and some preferred dates for your presentation. I will post names and tentative titles of your project on our course web page on a first-come, first-served basis. Once a topic is approved, I will not approve additional groups to work on that same topic.
- HW #5 - due on Wednesday, March 27
- Your proposal for our fourth project dealing with baseball or team performance is due on Wednesday, March 27. The goal of this project is to use multivariate statistical models and methods that you know and at least one machine learning method from our textbook (or another source) to address research questions of interest to you and your partner. You may also want to consider Markov chains for wide variety of iteresting baseball questions. You should find a peer-reviewed article related to your research question(s) of interest, and the data set that you use for your analysis must include at least three years of data. Your presentation should be 10 to 12 minutes in length, with a 3 to 5 minute Q&A session. There will be a hard cutoff at 15 minutes during this round of presentations. I would also like to encourage you to incorporate comments about any new R commands, functions, or packages into your presentation. A one page executive summary is required for this project. Please share your materials (journal article, data, R code, slides, and a one page executive summary) with the entire class 24 hours before your presentation by creating a folder with your names under Baseball\Student Projects on our Google Drive folder. Your proposal should include the names of the members of your group, a short description of your question(s) of interest, initial thoughts about appropriate analyses, and some preferred dates for your presentation. I will post names and tentative titles of your project on our course web page on a first-come, first-served basis. Once a topic is approved, I will not approve additional groups to work on that same topic.
- HW #6 - due on Wednesday, April 3
- Written executive summary (3 to 5 pages) for the Hornets analytics staff. Please see my email message on February 28, 2024 for more details.
- HW #7 - due on Wednesday, April 17
- Your proposal for our fifth project dealing with Olympic sports or some other sport (not baseball, basketball, or football) is due on Wednesday, April 17. The goal of this project is to use multivariate statistical models and methods that you know and at least one statistical method that is new to you to address research questions of interest to you and your partner. Moving average models, order statistics, and record values may be especially helpful for questions related to Olympic records. You should find a peer-reviewed article related to your research question(s) of interest, and the data set that you use for your analysis must include at least 5 years of data. Your presentation should be 10 to 12 minutes in length, with a 3 to 5 minute Q&A session. There will be a hard cutoff at 15 minutes during this round of presentations. I would also like to encourage you to incorporate comments about any new R commands, functions, or packages into your presentation. A one page executive summary is required for this project. Please share your materials (journal article, data, R code, slides, and a one page executive summary) with the entire class 24 hours before your presentation by creating a folder with your names under Olympics\Student Projects on our Google Drive folder. Your proposal should include the names of the members of your group, a short description of your question(s) of interest, initial thoughts about appropriate analyses, and some preferred dates for your presentation. I will post names and tentative titles of your project on our course web page on a first-come, first-served basis. Once a topic is approved, I will not approve additional groups to work on that same topic.
- HW #8 - due on Friday, April 26
- Your proposal for your final project is due on Friday, April 26. Your proposal should include your research questions of interest, a peer-reviewed article related to your research quesrtions, a short description of the data set(s) you will use for your analysis, and your preliminary thoughts regarding your statistical analysis. For more details regarding your final paper, which should be no more than 15 pages, please see our syllabus. Sample papers are provided on our Google Drive folder. Your final papers are due on Tuesday, May 7 at 6:30 pm. Your data set(s), R code, peer-reviewed article, and final paper should be uploaded to your folder in the Google Drive folder for our class.
Data Sources
- Baseball
- Basketball
- Football
- General
- Golf
- Hockey
Interesting Articles
Interesting Books
- The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game, Tim Brown with Erik Kratz
Interesting Conferences
Interesting Links