Statistics and spatial analytics for the present day
The lack of finding the thing I’d like to read often compels me to write. In this case, finding decent discourse surrounding the Djokovic affair has been a struggle due to both the spin of politics and the needs of media to simplify the affair. The story itself? A complete train wreck. Often it takes …
Continue reading “Double Fault: The multiple failures of the Djokovic visa story”
It’s been clear since even before the twelve breakaway clubs announced the European Super League that European football doesn’t quite work. The biggest clubs on the continent are unhappy since they don’t play the other biggest clubs enough. Big clubs from small countries seem unhappy because the playing field isn’t level. Medium-sized clubs from big …
Continue reading “Improving European football through a simple incentive change”
I love sports management games. I don’t remember the first one I played – perhaps it was Soccer Management Simulator on a shareware disk, perhaps Tony La Russa Baseball II if you remove the game’s arcade element. When I learned to program, that was what I wanted to make – something which simulated the outcome …
Continue reading “Game Design: Developing a sports management game”
After mostly finishing up the QGIS redistricting tool, I realised that by reusing some of the code, I could come up with a QGIS plugin that could redistrict automatically. This isn’t a novel concept, as a quick search of automated redistricters bring up attempts to redistrict automatically using such mathematical devices as Markov chains, or …
5.6 billion Aussie rules games, simulated on an off-the-shelf laptop. In the work on leverage I’ve done over the past couple of months, I figured there’s a fixed winning percentage given the minute, the margin, and a team’s initial (estimated) winning percentage. I also figured this could be easily achieved through simulation. I simulated 10,000 …
Continue reading “AFL: The complete winning percentage lookup table”
There’s more to blog about than just sports statistics, and that includes the release of the QGISv3 redistricting plugin I’ve written! The website https://www.qgisredistricting.com is now live and provides details on how to download and install the plugin from a zip along with operational instructions. The plugin comes from a desire to be able to …
Even though only my extreme partisanship completely explains why, I greatly enjoyed the first live footy match I watched in 2019. Most neutrals – if they were watching at all – had turned off the North Melbourne-Carlton game after watching the Kangas kick the opening seven goals to lead 10.6.66 to 1.7.13 at halftime. We …
Continue reading “AFL: When has a team definitively won the game?”
I’m excited about the article you’re currently reading in part because I get to advertise a couple new developments in footy statistics. First is The Arc AFL’s complete AFL history. Using ELO (which admittedly isn’t my favourite way to determine winners and losers, but it serves its purpose well here) you can easily determine the …
Continue reading “AFL: 1990 and 1999 grand final in-game winning percentages”
Recently I put my AFL leverage simulator through its paces, generating both winning percentages and leverage for the entire 2019 season. The leverage simulator simulates the remainder of each AFL game from any given minute to determine how often a team wins from that point. More importantly, it also determines the game’s leverage, or how …
Continue reading “AFL: The most important goals of 2019, ranked by math”
As I sat with my friend in the second deck of Dodger Stadium on September 4, 2017, we began to contemplate the impossible. Heading into the bottom of the sixth inning, Robbie Ray had retired the first 15 batters he faced without allowing a baserunner. The Diamondbacks were up 2-0, J.D. Martinez having hit a …