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subjective scoring in Olympic sports drives me a little crazy
The Olympics are beginning. When I think of the Olympic sports, I think of a lot of sports that scored subjectively. Not so much stronger, faster, and more goals, more of panels of judges picking...
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Markov chains for ranking sports teams
My favorite talk at ISERC 2014 (the IIE conference) was “A new approach to ranking using dual-level decisions” by Baback Vaziri, Yuehwern Yih, Mark Lehto, and Tom Morin (Purdue University) [Link]. They...
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Major League Baseball scheduling at the German OR Society Conference
Mike Trick talked about his experience setting the Major League Baseball (MLB) schedule at the 2014 German OR Conference in Aachen, Germany. Mike’s plenary talk had two major themes: 1. Getting the job...
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underpowered statistical tests and the myth of the myth of the hot hand
In grad school, I learned about the hot hand fallacy in basketball. The so-called “hot hand” is the person whose scoring success probability is temporarily increased and therefore should shoot the ball...
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introducing Badger Bracketology, a tool for forecasting the NCAA football...
Today I am introducing Badger Bracketology: http://bracketology.engr.wisc.edu/ I have long been interested in football analytics, and I enjoy crunching numbers while watching the games. This year is...
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Some thoughts on the College Football Playoff
After a fun year of Badger Bracketology, I wanted to reflect upon the college football playoff. Nate Silver reflects upon the playoff in an article on FiveThirtyEight, and he touches on the two most...
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the NFL football draft and the knapsack problem
In this week’s Advanced Football Analytics podcast, Brian Burke talked about the knapsack problem and the NFL draft [Link]. I enjoyed it. Brian has a blog post explaining the concept of the knapsack...
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Should a football team run or pass? A game theory and linear programming...
Last week I visited Oberlin College to deliver the Fuzzy Vance Lecture in Mathematics (see post here). In addition, I gave two lectures to Bob Bosch’s undergraduate optimization course. My post about...
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Punk Rock OR was on the Advanced Football Analytics podcast
I am thrilled to have been a guest on the Advanced Football Analytics podcast hosted by Dave Collins (@DaveKCollins ) to talk about Badger Bracketology and football analytics. Listen here [iTunes...
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sports analytics featured in the latest INFORMS Editor’s Cut
An Editor’s Cut on Sports Analytics edited by Scott Nestler and Anne Robinson is available. The volume is a collection of sports analytics articles published in INFORMS journals. Some of the articles...
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Ranking the B1G
I post weekly NCAA men’s basketball rankings over at Badger Bracketology. Every week I also post the rankings of the Big Ten conference teams. Here are the rankings right now. They differ from the...
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Some thoughts on the College Football Playoff
After a fun year of Badger Bracketology, I wanted to reflect upon the college football playoff. Nate Silver reflects upon the playoff in an article on FiveThirtyEight, and he touches on the two most...
View ArticleClik here to view.
the NFL football draft and the knapsack problem
In this week’s Advanced Football Analytics podcast, Brian Burke talked about the knapsack problem and the NFL draft [Link]. I enjoyed it. Brian has a blog post explaining the concept of the knapsack...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Should a football team run or pass? A game theory and linear programming...
Last week I visited Oberlin College to deliver the Fuzzy Vance Lecture in Mathematics (see post here). In addition, I gave two lectures to Bob Bosch’s undergraduate optimization course. My post about...
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Sports scheduling meets business analytics: why scheduling Major League...
Mike Trick of Carnegie Mellon University came to the Industrial and Systems Engineering department at UW-Madison to give a colloquium entitled “Sports scheduling meets business analytics.” How hard is...
View Articlehow long will volleyball games last with side out vs. rally scoring: a Markov...
I introduced a Markov chain to model volleyball scoring schemes in my course on probability models. I am old enough to remember side out scoring, where a team could score a point only if they served...
View ArticleWe already have an 8 team college football playoff
I commonly hear others argue for expanding the four team College Football Playoff (CFBP) to an eight team playoff. I oppose expanding the playoff to eight teams because for all practical purposes we...
View Articlehow unusual was it that the visiting team won all 7 games of the World Series?
Last night the Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros in the seventh game of the World Series. The visiting team won all seven games of the series. This has never happened before. Two evenly...
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When should a football team attempt a two point conversion instead of an...
On Sunday November 10, 2019, the Carolina Panthers were down 14 against the Packers early in the 4th quarter. They scored a touchdown, putting them down by 8, and they went for a two point conversion....
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a soccer win probability model
Last year, I tweeted about a win probability model I created for soccer (or football, depending on where you are from) and the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup case study. I promised to blog about this case...
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