Soccer (or football) fans everywhere will turn their eyes to France over the next month to cheer on amazing women from 24 countries contending on the global stage. These women compete at the highest level in an area that for too long was viewed as a man’s game. In many
Marathons seem to be popular these days, therefore I decided to dive into some data and find a way to apply analytics. You might find this interesting if you're a fan of marathons - or if you like seeing the details behind cool graphing techniques! Before we get started, here's
Have you ever dreamed of working for a professional sports organization? Do you play fantasy sports leagues and fantasize about owning a real team? Do you follow the news about player drafts and trades, and wish you could influence who your team picks? Well, here’s your chance. The latest SAS
Changing how we’ve viewed the beautiful game forever. How often have we looked at a game and wondered, “How did he miss that?!” Now, with expected goals (xG) metric, we can really see if our frustration is justified, and perhaps use that to predict future results. The use of analytics
Why is sports analytics rapidly becoming a high priority for several universities? Because they’re beginning to truly understand the significance of a winning athletic program. The value of a win speaks volumes and takes on different forms. It trickles down to the fans filling the stadium seats, television contracts, fan
The Special Olympics is part of the inclusion movement for people with intellectual disabilities. The organisation provides year-round sports training and competitions for adults and children with intellectual disabilities. In March 2019 the Special Olympics World Games will be held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. SAS is an official
Recently, Scott Jackson, Director Business Intelligence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shared their data quality, reporting and analytics journey. They're using SAS in a multitude of ways – from operations, institutional research, athletics – and are now looking to scale to the enterprise. They've been so successful
As you might have guessed from some of my previous blog posts, I'm an avid paddler. I like to paddle boats, and I like to try to go fast! And when I'm considering buying a new boat, it's only natural that I would analyze the data to make an informed
Ever since the Moneyball book & movie came out, athletes have been scrambling to use data and analytics to gain a competitive advantage. One of my favorite sports is boat racing - the ones you paddle. Follow along as I lead you through some maps and graphs I created for
American readers may know that the ongoing 2018 international soccer/football tournament is a big deal in other countries. But it's hard to grasp just how ubiquitous and important it is when there's no other event like it in the United States. The best way I can describe it is if the
Ballpark Chasers A cross-country trip is pretty much an all-American experience, and so is baseball. Traveling around the country to see all 30 Major League Baseball (MLB) stadiums is not a new idea; there's even a social network between so-called "Ballpark Chasers" where people communicate and share their journeys. Even
What do the New York Mets, the Orlando Magic and the Boston Bruins all have in common? They all use SAS analytics to gain deeper insights into athlete recruitment, retention, performance, safety and more. And after seeing the success teams like these have had using analytics, collegiate sports are turning
I recently paddled in a boat race, and was wondering how I did compared to all the other paddlers. And being a Graph Guy, I decided I should find a cool way to graph the data ... Here's some background information ... There's a great organization called Bridge II Sports
This past weekend, I was a volunteer helping with an Ironman 70.3 race. I was really impressed & inspired by the athletes ... I was also excited about the quantity and variety of data generated by this type of race (compared to a regular marathon). And as a 'graph guy' I
Billy Beane attained fame in baseball and analytics circles long before Brad Pitt portrayed him in the 2011 film Moneyball. In fact, Beane was making quite the name for himself prior to Michael Lewis’s 2004 book of the same name. It’s no overstatement to claim that, as general manager (GM)
Opening Day is here! Every game experience at the ball park is memorable for my family. I'm excited to smell the fresh popcorn and peanuts. I love holding cold drinks in hopes of catching a foul ball with my cup. I’m anxious to see my team’s new prospects in action
Here in the US, it's the nationwide men's college basketball tournament season! Therefore let's use some data from the previous years' tournaments to sharpen our analytics & visualization skills... But before we get started, I must mention (brag?) that my alma mater, NC State University, won this tournament in 1983.
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.
My high school basketball coach started preparing us for the tournaments in the season’s first practice. He talked about the “long haul” of tournament basketball, and geared our strategies toward a successful run at the end of the season. I thought about the “long haul” when considering my brackets for
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
Who cares about sports and data? Not just athletes, coaches and fans. It turns out that many companies outside of sporting organisations are also associated with the sports industry. For example, financial services organisations are actively involved in sports sponsorships. Retailers sell fan merchandise. Telcos build social engagement strategies around
.@philsimon chimes in on new data-gathering methods and what they mean for analytics.
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
Machine learning applications for NBA coaches and players might seem like an odd choice for me to write about. Let us get something out of the way: I don’t know much about basketball. Or baseball. Or even soccer, much to the chagrin of my friends back home in Europe. However,
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!
Last week Robert Allison showed how to download NBA data into SAS and create graphs such as the location where Stephen Curry took shots in the 2015-16 season to date. The graph at left shows the kind of graphs that Robert created. I've reversed the colors from Robert's version, so
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
