Slashdot Mirror
"Muthuball": How To Build an NBA Championship Team
First time accepted submitter Quillem writes "Muthu Alagappan, a 5'9" biomechanical engineering undergraduate at Stanford, made a presentation at this year's MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference which might well do to basketball what Moneyball did to baseball. His contribution revolves around a topographical analysis of NBA games which contends that there are really 13 positions in basketball — not just five. Besides a rather patronising — but informative — read in Gentlemen's Quarterly, there are earlier stories over at Wired and NYT blogs. Muthu's talk and slides are also available."
I could personally care less about professional sports, however, there is a lot of money to be made from such analysis. Advertiseing revenues, statistical odds(for gambling), and learning more about a game that millions of people love than what those millions of people will ever find useful and just because we freaking can are great reasons to investigate this Stanford student's work.
a 5'9" biomechanical engineering undergraduate
I, for one, welcome our new 5'9" cyborg overlords.
The statistics currently being tracked is more offense focused. Bad Boys of Detroit, the Bulls, and the Spurs had solid defense that helped them win but not necessarily show up in statistics unless you do a game-to-game analysis of the opponent's average offense performance vs performance against a specific team.
Other than that, it's a pretty interesting thought/analysis... Just incomplete... but I'm sure someone can do a much more complete PhD thesis on this and get funded by some NBA team :-P
How is the GQ article "patronising" - because the opening summary says, "A Stanford undergrad's new super-nerd study"? That's the only thing I see that could be remotely considered patronizing. And frankly, this *is* a "super-nerd" study - how is a statistical analysis of NBA players NOT super nerdy?
Can we change the Slashdot motto to "butthurt editorializing for nerds," instead of "news for nerds?" The "news" part implies a factual focus, and the summaries are increasingly flamebait of the first order.
It's basketball. Really, does anybody with a working brain really give a screw about this game? .
Yes, we don't all fit the stereotype of nerds living in our parent's basement. Some of us actually loved sports in school, and have gone on to use that in carving a career out for ourselves.
I work in technology, and serve as a webmaster. I'm not even going to pretend like I have the tech knowledge many of the people who post on Slashdot do, but at the same time, I have more than enough to do my job. I would also like to point out, it's a job I love very much. All of which is to say I definitely have a working brain, and anyone who has spent any time with basketball knows it very much is a sport which requires the ability to think and analyze at a very rapid pace. Playing, coaching, broadcasting, even watching can be mentally taxing if you wish.
So I'd ask for you to leave your ignorance at the door and appreciate the fact that just because other people have interests you do not share, it doesn't reflect poorly on their intelligence.
I could personally care less about professional sports.
How much less could you care, or do you mean you could not care less?
Moneyball the movie was based off Moneyball the book. The concepts in Moneyball are real & have been implemented by most of Major League Baseball.
Sorry. Could you repeat that? The irony made me black out for a few seconds there.
Sorry. Now my brain is bleeding. Could you start over?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I had a sarcastic reply but instead I'm going to simply say this: Donald Knuth was a basketball coach. See him talk about his baskeball coaching experience here.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
...for pointing out a common error that makes the speaker sound stupid. Is it just me or does anyone else get that "fingernails on a chalkboard" sensation every time you hear a speaker blithely say words that clearly mean the *exact opposite* of what was intended?
You should all hand over your geek cards at the front desk, if you ever were in position of one.
You have a geek making a presentation about an idea on how to bring together an optimum team of items depending on their statistical profiles, and you argue about how interesting basketball/baseball is? I have never witnessed people miss the point all at once that badly ever before in my life...
Here, I will boil it down for you:
1. Gather statistical data on the items of which you want to build a new group of.
2. Do some data-mining and graphing to figure out how these items cluster. Do not predefine clusters, but let them surface themselves.
3. Depending on a free, non-mapped variable (e.g. cost) make an optimum choice of individuals from each group. Alternatively, base your choice on a given pattern that you want to match or counter-act (e.g. the opposing team).
4. Profit!
5. Gather new data and update your graphs to keep up with times.
How about starting to come up with ideas on how to apply this concept to physics, medicine, engineering and economics? Jeez...