---
title: "How Can Analytics and Statistics be Applied in Sports?"
output:
  ioslides_presentation: 
    smaller: true
---

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
```


## Outline

- Appreciate the usage of analytics and statistics in sports

## How is Analytics Used in Sports?

- Designing lineups
- Power ranking of teams
- Determining future potential of draft picks
- Predicting outcomes of games
- Much more!

## Elo Rating System

- Intially developed for calculating skill level in 1 vs. 1 games such as chess.
- Discovered by Arpad Elo
- Consists of a series of complicated formulas

![](elo.png)

Image acquired from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-we-calculate-nba-elo-ratings/


## Using Random Forests to Estimate Win Probability Before Each Play of an NFL Game
  - Article by Dennis Lock and Dan Nettleton
  - https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jqas.2014.10.issue-2/jqas-2013-0100/jqas-2013-0100.xml

In this article, the authors apply a machine learning algorithm, random forests, to update in-game probabilities before the next play begins in the NFL.

##

Here is an image from the stated article, showing the win probabilities before each play.

![](probabilities.png)

## Building Optimal Teams (Moneyball)

  - Movie released in 2011
  - Describes how analytics in used in baseball to build rosters using less money than big time franchises

![](salaries.png)
 Image acqurired from http://adilmoujahid.com/posts/2014/07/baseball-analytics/


## Predicting outcomes of games

  - Arguably longest application of data in sports
  - Collecting past data and leveraging that to predict the outcomes of future games

## Finding Similar Players

Are some players closely related to others that they form groups or *clusters*?

<center><img src="cluster.png" width="800px"></center>


 Image acqurired from https://fastbreakdata.com/classifying-the-modern-nba-player-with-machine-learning-539da03bb824


## Many More!!

There are many more applications of analytics in sports. This is just a few examples. In later lessons, we will give an introduction to machine learning, so you can do some of these independently.

