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How Don Knuth's computer skills helped his college basketball team

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Re: How Don Knuth's computer skills helped his college basketball team

#11

Post by nocman »

Jerry Lucas used his own memory system and his personal collection of data on opponents to his advantage during his extremely successful basketball career.

The video at the following link discusses it briefly. At the moment I can't find any more detailed discussion of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK6yf3qaT4A

Re: How Don Knuth's computer skills helped his college basketball team

#12

Post by eru »

scrrr wrote: post #2

I think nowadays such analysis plays a big part in sports. For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't.

Interestingly the German coach was never an extra-ordinary player himself. But he is very well respected as a coach in Germany.

Re: How Don Knuth's computer skills helped his college basketball team

#13

Post by philwelch »

dpapathanasiou wrote: post #7
scrrr wrote: post #2

I think nowadays such analysis plays a big part in sports. For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't.

" For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't. " I agree with you in general, but that's not the best example you could have used there. Maradona spent most of the tournament boasting about not needing a gameplan, and saying things things like: " Nobody ever told me w…

I wonder what Pep Guardiola (Messi's coach at Barcelona) thought about that remark. Messi, like many players[1], has played significantly better for his club than for his country.

[1] The entire England squad, for example.

Re: How Don Knuth's computer skills helped his college basketball team

#14

Post by ybot »

spinchange wrote: post #9
scrrr wrote: post #2

I think nowadays such analysis plays a big part in sports. For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't.

I lack specific examples or links, but had heard a few years ago that U.S. pro sports franchises like the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots, to think of two, use a lot of "Quant" analysis in addition to traditional coaching methods. I'm sure everyone is doing it across pro sports now.

Interestingly enough, Bloomberg has started offering "Quant" tools to MLB teams: http://www.bloombergsports.com/proofferings/

They specialize in providing data and analytics on financial data. Clearly they didn't think it was too much of a leap to go from analyzing securities to analyzing baseball players.

As far as specific links, the Red Sox employ Bill James (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James), who is a fairly famous statistician, to help them run the team. He invented Sabermetrics, "the analysis of baseball through objective evidence". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics)

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