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A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

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Re: A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

#21

Post by WillyF »

bretthopper wrote: post #14

Just some background for those not familiar with "Lin-sanity": - He was a great college player at Harvard but wasn't drafted. - He was cut by 2 NBA teams before the Knicks picked him up. - He was probably the 4th point guard on the Knicks depth chart. - The Knicks have been terrible this year and are currently without their 2 best players (Amare Stoudamire and Carmello Anthony) - The Knicks have now won 4 straight ga…

If you go by the WP48 stat, Amare is actually the Knicks' second worst player and Carmelo is their 8th best player. Tyson Chandler is by far their best player, and is currently the second best player behind LeBron.

http://www.thenbageek.com/teams/nyk

Re: A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

#22

Post by frankdenbow »

zheng wrote: post #5

What surprises me most about this story isn't that it happened, but that people still are surprised it works. A data-driven approach will always be better than picking people by how good they "look", etc. Human scouts are biased, make mistakes, and miss plays. Statistics don't lie. The one catch is of course how you analyze those statistics makes all the difference.

Agreed. Theres a startup called NumberFire that essentially focuses on this perspective to serve up information based on sports stats.

Re: A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

#23

Post by toddh »

zheng wrote: post #5

What surprises me most about this story isn't that it happened, but that people still are surprised it works. A data-driven approach will always be better than picking people by how good they "look", etc. Human scouts are biased, make mistakes, and miss plays. Statistics don't lie. The one catch is of course how you analyze those statistics makes all the difference.

How good are the Oakland A's? Not very. So how successful is the data driven approach really? Isn't accepting a single case like this in the NBA as any kind of proof unscientific?

Re: A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

#24

Post by toddh »

zheng wrote: post #5

What surprises me most about this story isn't that it happened, but that people still are surprised it works. A data-driven approach will always be better than picking people by how good they "look", etc. Human scouts are biased, make mistakes, and miss plays. Statistics don't lie. The one catch is of course how you analyze those statistics makes all the difference.

How good are the Oakland A's? Not very. So how successful is the data driven approach really? Isn't accepting a single case like this in the NBA as any kind of proof unscientific?

Re: A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

#25

Post by pepdek »

bretthopper wrote: post #14

Just some background for those not familiar with "Lin-sanity": - He was a great college player at Harvard but wasn't drafted. - He was cut by 2 NBA teams before the Knicks picked him up. - He was probably the 4th point guard on the Knicks depth chart. - The Knicks have been terrible this year and are currently without their 2 best players (Amare Stoudamire and Carmello Anthony) - The Knicks have now won 4 straight ga…

I'd like to add the Knicks gave serious consideration to cutting him from the roster hours before his first start because his 30-day contract was set to expire in a few days.

Re: A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

#26

Post by william42 »

toddh wrote: post #23
zheng wrote: post #5

What surprises me most about this story isn't that it happened, but that people still are surprised it works. A data-driven approach will always be better than picking people by how good they "look", etc. Human scouts are biased, make mistakes, and miss plays. Statistics don't lie. The one catch is of course how you analyze those statistics makes all the difference.

How good are the Oakland A's? Not very. So how successful is the data driven approach really? Isn't accepting a single case like this in the NBA as any kind of proof unscientific?

Didn't the Oakland A's stop being successful precisely because every other team picked up their methods?

Re: A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

#27

Post by Retric »

jimmybot wrote: post #18
corin_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of that classic scam of sending out sports (or anything else) predictions to a huge mailing list, and basically AB testing in such a way that after a little time there are at least x% who think your success rate is incredible.

How is this anywhere the same? In a scam, you don't have any way of making any future correct predictions--it's just random. This analyst has a reasoned system that can be tested against past players and against future prospects. Sure, there's going to be someone out there that picks Jeremy Lin. But the trick is, can you correctly identify players who are already known to be good based on their college stats, make th…

His point is the number of people making predictions is high enough that it raises the bar for people to stand out from the pack. Basically run an ANOVA test on 10 groups vs 10,000 groups and it takes a larger divination to stand out from the pack.

PS: It does not matter if there is a system behind their predictions, what matters is how well their predictions hold up over time. Otherwise your just: http://xkcd.com/904/

Re: A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

#28

Post by GBond »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #11
GBond wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprised that most experts(NBA & DI school scouts) don't embrace this because it is easier and safer to go with the typical archetype as opposed to raw stats. Its "human nature" safe in the sense most people will not question if you go with the established archetype. It also devalues the current process of scouting. An apt quote from the movie Moneyball: "I know you've taken it in the teeth out there, but the fi…

Erm, as I understand it most NBA organizations have significant statistics/economics departments. I don't think the practice of going by looks or things of that nature is dominant any more except for sports pundits trying to rationalize events after they have happened.

Yes, some NBA clubs have started to spend money on quant/stats but I wouldn't say there is a majority cultural buy-in particularly in regards to scouting. Mostly it is in the form of a stat guy assistance coach who will recommend how to play opponents.

It is gaining popularity. Boston Celtics are one of the pioneers. The Nets even Bought a sports video/stats startup recently. Time will tell if talent evaluation will also change as Lin has been a paradigm-destroyer of the old way of scouting.

Re: A "Moneyball" statician predicted Jeremy Lin's success 2 years ago

#29

Post by marklabedz »

hyperbovine wrote: post #20
zheng wrote: post #5

What surprises me most about this story isn't that it happened, but that people still are surprised it works. A data-driven approach will always be better than picking people by how good they "look", etc. Human scouts are biased, make mistakes, and miss plays. Statistics don't lie. The one catch is of course how you analyze those statistics makes all the difference.

While it's true that sport scouting has traditionally under-relied on data, I wouldn't be so quick write the entire profession off entirely in favor of spreadsheets. Statistics can certainly be made to lie (cf. the book, "How to lie with statistics"), and there are a lot of aspects of human performance that are difficult to quantify. Performance under pressure is the first thing that comes to mind--reliably sinking a…

The baseball equivalent, clutch hitting, has been kicked around in sabermetric circles for almost as long as Bill James has been writing of baseball's flawed stats and biases of pro scouts.

The "common wisdom" of sabermetrics (if you can call it such a thing) holds that clutch hitting doesn't exist, but many including James, aren't quite ready to completely write it off.

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