The second round of the 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament was an interesting one. Eight-seeded Wisconsin took out the reigning champion Wildcats, despite pundit predictions that Villanova could go all the way again. South Carolina, 24-10 in the SEC during the regular season, upset perennial favorite Duke by seven points.
The NC Scholastic Chess Championship is coming up this weekend, and my buddy Michael Thomas asked if I might could create a few graphs to help analyze the event data. How could I pass up an opportunity like that?!?! Read along, and find out what graphs I created, and the
El próximo domingo, si los pronósticos de los expertos se cumplen, disfrutaremos de un juego espectacular: un duelo sin cuartel, entre Halcones de Atlanta y Patriotas de Nueva Inglaterra, para conseguir el mítico trofeo Vince Lombardi. En la National Football League (NFL), los equipos –y sus estructuras de negocio– ya
It's the 3rd week of January. Did you set a fitness resolution or a 2017 exercise goal? How are you doing? Usually week 3 is where things start getting real. And by real, I mean real hard. The sparkle of newness wears off, enthusiasm wanes, the gym is crowded, and
Longevity research represents facts and figures related to one's accumulation of years on this planet. Hawaiians top the charts in the US with a life expectancy of 80 years while, believe it or not, DC represents the lowest at 72 years. NC, although known for delicacies like sweet tea and barbeque,
Brings relief to feet, legs and spine. Relaxes the nervous system and cultivates sleep. Legs Up the Wall (Sanskrit: Viparita Karani)
Actualmente, a nivel mundial los deportes generan ganancias estratosféricas, desde las propias entradas a los eventos y/o torneos, los múltiples contratos televisivos, patrocinios, souvenirs, hasta las marcas de ropa y calzado deportivo que han hecho de esta vertical de negocio una de las más rentables en los últimos tiempos. La
Consumers want content 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all around the world. It's a tall order for media & entertainment (M&E) companies and a 180 degree shift from days past. How do they provide enough content to meet demand? Audiences are binge watching over-the-top (OTT) programming, creating
Stretches the hips, ankles and shoulders while opening chest and lengthening spine. Cow Face Pose (Sanskrit: Gomukhasana)
Did you know that socks are one of the most needed but least donated items at homeless shelters? Or that 4,000 people will experience homelessness each year in Wake County alone? To bring awareness to this need and to encourage YOU to make a difference by donating socks to your local
When you read people’s stories of winning Olympic medals, they often fall into cliché. It's hard not to. In my experience, the nerves, the expectations, the emotions are all heightened beyond what I've ever experienced, so it becomes necessary to use all the hyperbole at your disposal. That said, winning
The summer games have all the elements of a great story—power, drama, intrigue, and the key moment when one team rises above the rest and is dressed in gold. I guess I can’t help but love the games -- and as a professional communicator, I can’t resist a great story.
As American football teams prepare to select new team members later today, fans and pundits can only guess how the draft will turn out. Will your favorite professional team make good picks? And will your favorite college players go to good teams? With high stakes and billions of possible outcomes,
With more and more data available these days, and computers that can analyze that data, it's becoming feasible to look for fraud in events such as the Boston Marathon. So put on your detective hat, and follow along as I show you how to use SAS to be a data sleuth!
While you're at SAS Global Forum (or any conference) in Las Vegas, you might have a bit of spare time to do some sightseeing. Therefore I've put together a list & map of interesting things you might want to experience! Below is a snapshot of my map - click it
People have always been fascinated by sports statistics, and with the recent popularity of fantasy sports there is an increased demand for custom analyses of the sports data. With those folks in mind, I have created a simple example that SAS programmers can use as a starting point for analyzing NBA
There’s been quite a lot of chatter lately about my Boston Red Sox and their recent shift ‘away’ from using analytics or ‘sabermetrics,’ as data science is often referred to in baseball (Jeff Passan, one of my favorite baseball writers, chimes in here – Forbes also commented that the Sox are
April 7, 2003 will go down in the history books for me. The streets of Syracuse, New York, were abuzz. I was a junior television major, and our men’s basketball team had just won its first NCAA basketball title. Our three-seed Orangemen had bested #2 Kansas in New Orleans, but the
Eating donuts, burning calories, and raising money for a good cause -- that's what the annual Krispy Kreme Challenge is all about. If this intrigues you, read on to find out more... But first, here's a picture of me eating a donut, preparing for a race. I bet you didn't
Shocking headlines to start the new year: Paul DePodesta is leaving the New York Mets and Major League Baseball (MLB) to take a top office position at the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL). Not so shocked? You don’t care? Who’s Paul De Podesta? Well for those of
What strategy do you use to pick your lottery numbers? Do you suspect that the future winning numbers might be somehow related to the past winning numbers? If so, this blog's for you! The Powerball lottery jackpot is up to about $1.4 billion - the largest lottery jackpot there has
If you're just a casual Star Wars fan, you might be confused about the order of the movies. Here's a SAS graph that will help you make sense of it all, before Episode VII comes out this week! If you'd like to see how I created this custom graph, here's a
Saturday Night Live has been on television for about as long as most of us have been old enough to stay up and watch it (since 1975). Therefore, when I saw that Rolling Stone had ranked all the cast members throughout the show's history, I knew this was going to
~ Coauthored by Varsha Chawla and Dale Rierson ~ Here at SAS, we take our sports seriously. With our corporate headquarters in a city surrounded by major universities and with offices all over the world, it’s no wonder that sports data often becomes the forefront of our demos and projects.
With the 2015 World Series currently underway, there couldn't be a more exciting time to discuss how analytics is transforming the game of baseball. It comes as no surprise to say that managers and front office executives, not to mention the players, are continuously looking for a competitive advantage over their opponents.
I get several requests and recommendations for analyzing sports data. I'm not a big sports fan ... but when did I ever let that stop me! When I find interesting data, I like to graph it! Before we get into the nitty-gritty data analysis, here is a picture of my friend Jennifer's daughter
Are you thinking about completing a fall race? Whether it’s a 5K, 10K, or half or full marathon, it’s going to be here before you know it. I’ve been running for years, and I can tell you, there’s nothing like the motivation of signing up for a race to get
The 2016 summer games are less than a year away, and British sports fans are hoping for a performance that beats Team GB’s record medal tally at London 2012. That’s never been achieved by a country directly after hosting the Games. And the pressure’s on us in the GB Rowing Team given
There's big money in professional sports these days - we're talking billions of dollars! Do you know which teams are the most valuable? The graphs in this blog will show you... I recently saw a bar chart on dadaviz.com showing the world's most valuable sports teams. It was the right kind
We recently met up with Paul Bennett, a member of the GB Rowing Team and current World Champion, and Laurie Miles, Head of Analytics for SAS UK & Ireland, who has been analyzing the team's data. They chatted about data, the life and mind of an elite sportsman, and uncovered some
