Related papers: The Hot Hand and Its Effect on the NBA
Basketball analytics has significantly advanced our understanding of the game, with shot selection emerging as a critical factor in both individual and team performance. With the advent of player tracking technologies, a wealth of granular…
"The chance to win given a certain move" is an easily obtainable quantity from data and often quoted in gaming statistics. It is also the fundamental quantity that reinforcement learning AI bases on. Unfortunately, this conditional…
We introduce a simple stochastic dynamics for game theory. It assumes ``local'' rationality in the sense that any player climbs the gradient of his utility function in the presence of a stochastic force which represents deviation from…
This paper examines whether increased awareness can affect racial bias and colorism. We exploit a natural experiment arising from the widespread publicity of Price and Wolfers (2010), which served as an external shock, intensifying scrutiny…
We investigate the probability of scoring a point when playing the basketball shooting game called "Horse". We show that under the Traditional Rules, it is optimal to choose very easy shots. We propose alternative rules called Pops Rules,…
Many enthusiasts and experts publish forecasts of the order players are drafted into professional sports leagues, known as mock drafts. Using a novel dataset of mock drafts for the National Basketball Association (NBA), we analyze authors'…
We study the effects of randomness on competitions based on an elementary random process in which there is a finite probability that a weaker team upsets a stronger team. We apply this model to sports leagues and sports tournaments, and…
We theoretically study the effect of a third person enforcement on a one-shot prisoner's dilemma game played by two persons, with whom the third person plays repeated prisoner's dilemma games. We find that the possibility of the third…
Successful design of human-in-the-loop control systems requires appropriate models for human decision makers. Whilst most paradigms adopted in the control systems literature hide the (limited) decision capability of humans, in behavioral…
Change of direction is a key element of player movement in American football, yet there remains a lack of objective approaches for in-game performance evaluation of this athletic trait. Using tracking data, we propose a Bayesian…
We use a simple machine learning model, logistically-weighted regularized linear least squares regression, in order to predict baseball, basketball, football, and hockey games. We do so using only the thirty-year record of which visiting…
We have developed a sophisticated statistical model for predicting the hitting performance of Major League baseball players. The Bayesian paradigm provides a principled method for balancing past performance with crucial covariates, such as…
We investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the betting markets of professional and college sports. We find that during the pandemic, the moneyline betting markets of the National Basketball Association (NBA) became very…
This study investigates the concept of flexibility within League of Legends, a popular online multiplayer game, focusing on the relationship between user adaptability and team success. Utilizing a dataset encompassing players of varying…
Accuracy of throwing in games and sports is governed by how errors at projectile release are propagated by flight dynamics. To address the question of what governs the choice of throwing strategy, we use a simple model of throwing with an…
It is well known that athletic and physical condition is affected by age. Plotting an individual athlete's performance against age creates a graph commonly called the player's aging curve. Despite the obvious interest to coaches and…
We investigate how similar heatmaps of soccer players are when constructed from (i) event datasets and (ii) tracking datasets. When using event datasets, we show that the scale at which the events are grouped strongly influences the…
The number of active shooter incidents in the US has been increasing alarmingly. It is imperative for the government as well as the public to understand these events. Though both analytic and agent-based models have been proposed for…
The purpose of this research is to create a machine learning-based smart coaching approach for football that can replace manual analysis with real-time feedback for trainers. In-depth analysis of football player data by humans is…
Box score statistics are the baseline measures of performance for National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball. Between the 2011-2012 and 2015-2016 seasons, NCAA teams performed better at home compared to on the road in nearly…