Fun sports: Big data "penalty gold"

More and more sports around the world are using big data to evaluate athletes and develop new strategic plans to keep them in good shape. The 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analysis Conference (2013 MIT Sloan QSL Analytics Conference) recently held in Cambridge to share new results on the combination of big data and sports.

In the field of business, data analysis is a relatively new term in sports. With cutting-edge technology, we use powerful computers to analyze large amounts of data, to predict the winning of the game strategy, the potential of athletes, and even to buy and sell a team. All this information is placed in front of you. The famous Sports statistician Bill James, the general manager of the Oakland sports team, Billy Bean, and his associated book movie (The One starring Brad Pitt's "penalty Gold"), are related to observing the actual performance of the athlete or the sports team by analyzing the data.

The goal of data analysis is to make your team perform better with the least amount of resources possible, let the team manager deal with the player with the lower cost to the important players, and drive off those who pay high and return low, even a small team may be very competitive-this is the Oakland sports team's actual case.

We can consider the strategies developed by sports management and the cold data provided by researchers, rather than trusting intuition or outdated game plans.

The Conference presented a study of data analysis from three MIT students, by analyzing 11,896 of NFL pitches, they found that the environmental factors were far more important than the psychological factors in scoring, and that it was less meaningful to study the weather conditions such as customs and temperature.

Brian Burke has published an analytical article on the Advanced NFL stats website called "Four stalls in overtime: Kick-off". After the investigation, he found that in the NFL overtime, the team that has the kickoff will only win the game by touchdown or safety score. That is to say, any scores obtained after Kick-off will help the Kick-off party to win.

The data suggest that teams with tee kicks in overtime have a bigger win in the game because the tee will tend to take a sprint rather than a high kick in a four-speed push on the side. The more athletes are in their own field near the end, the greater the chance to take the first sprint, by contrast, the direct high altitude kick-off will cause the other party to snatch success rate rise, thus missing offensive positions and scoring opportunities. After long-distance grin, this strategy often helps the team win more games-but as long as there is a mistake and fails to win the battle, the NFL coach will immediately face a class crisis.

Another finding suggests that teams with Kick-off rights should not try long-distance grin strategies during overtime. Once in the other half, the regional advantage will soon be lost, which means that the chances of success of strategic deployment will continue to lower. And even if all goes well, the other side will still have a chance to get a city.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)