Sports analytics summer blog reading recommendations

The dog days of summer are almost here and if you are a sports fan it can be long.  Only baseball and soccer endure the summer seasons in the U.S.  Even if you are a die hard baseball or soccer fan the season itself can seem to last forever.  Now is the perfect time to get caught up in the analytics of your favorite spectator sports.  The following is some of my favorite sports analytics blogs and reading material.

Baseball
FanGraphs.com
FanGraphs is the all everything baseball numbers website.  The best thing that FanGraphs is known for is having a complete database of baseball players metrics.  One of my favorite metrics in baseball is WAR or Wins Above Replacement.  If that is not enough they even have heat maps of strike zone pitching locations.  Tracking your favorite team has never been more analytically exciting.

Football
AdvancedNFLstats.com
Advanced NFL Stats is the best NFL analytics blog out there right now.  Similar to FanGraphs there is a complete database of NFL offense and defense metrics.  Advanced NFL Stats also does a good job of explaining the numbers behind the measurements.  Football is no easy task to analyze team and player performance.  This site does an excellent job of both.  Also Advanced NFL Stats is keeping a database of play-by-play data.

Drive-by-Football
The up and comer of the NFL analytics blogs is Drive-By Football.  Drive-By does a great job of explaining some of the harder math around determing team and player efficiency.  One of the most interesting features is the Markov Chain Drive calculator which calculates likelihood of scoring scenarios drive-by-drive hence the name of the website.

Basketball
Wayne Winston blog
This blog's primary focus is on Basketball, specifically the NBA.  Wayne Winston is definitely known as a prolific Operations Research professor.  You may not know is that Wayne Winston consulted the Dallas Mavericks and other sports teams to help improve their franchises.  Wayne talks about other sports from time to time as well.  If you have not read Wayne Winston's book Mathletics: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football you are in for an analytical treat.   Wayne analyzes the why and how of measuring professional sports efficiency and winning.

Question and Answer sites for Analytics and Operations Research

This post is inspired from a similar post on Jeremy Anglin's blog about statistics question and answer sites.  I thought it would be a good idea to list some of the Operations Research and Analytics focused question and answer sites.  Some of these


Operations Research
OR-Exchange
This site is a stackexchange Q&A Site started by Michael Trick.  A crowd sourcing question and answer resource for anything Operations Research related.  I believe the best one available for Operations Research.

Numerical Optimization Forum
I find it unfortunate that there is so little forums based on Operations Research.  This is one of the few and it is a good one.  It is moderated by IEOR Tools contributor Dmitrey.

I'm purposely leaving out the sci.ops-research Usenet group because I believe its fallen into disarray with spam content.

Math/Statistics
Cross Validated
My favorite stack-exchange site dedicated to statistics.

Math   
Math Overflow  

Software
StackOverflow - R tag    
StackOverlow - SQL tag 

Mailing Lists
Mailing lists do not get as much notoriety as they once did.  Maybe because there are so many other options on the internet for getting information.  I still think they are a valuable resource and a good online community.

R Help Mailing List   http://www.r-project.org/mail.html
GLPK Mailing List   http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-glpk
COIN-OR Mailing List(s)  http://list.coin-or.org/mailman/listinfo/


Beta StackExchange Sites
These sites might be of interesting to the Operations Research community.  They are not live yet but are looking to generate a following.

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/28815/computational-science
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1907/numerical-modeling-and-simulation
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/27706/engineering-and-applied-sciences
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/26434/machine-learning
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/24602/data-capture-analysis
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/22964/sas-programming-language
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/18584/engineering-and-scientific-software-tools
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/15237/r-statistical-package
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/9218/operations-research (Interesting.  Do they know about OR-Exchange?)

I would love to see more examples that I can include in this list.

UPDATE:

I forgot to add O'Reilly's Q&A site with the R tag.  http://answers.oreilly.com/tag/R

Operations Research and gerrymandering

INFORMS blog challenge for January involves Operations Research and politics.  While public debate on politics will never change perhaps one thing that can change is the involvement better decision making to solving some of the political discourse.

One area of politics is the topic of gerrymandering.  For those that are not familiar to gerrymandering it is the process of resetting electoral boundaries for voting purposes.  Gerrymandering is a hot topic around any election because it is usually the party in power controls the rights to reset the electoral boundaries.  This leads to an obvious advantage to the party as they can maintain a seat in a legislature with setting boundaries based on past voting behavior.

Operations Research can be a valuable asset to the process of redistricting.  In fact Operations Research has been very much involved in redistricting for at least 50 years.  Decisions to draw electoral lines can follow any number of constructions including demographics, population centers, municipality boundaries or industry types.  As information abounds more freely there is more opportunity to use it for decision making.  It seems every new census brings more available data.  The growth of the internet has allowed information to be available more openly.  Opportunities should grow in Operations Research to provide redistricting decision makers the information for informed analysis.

Perhaps one of the better uses of Operations Research could be the ethical context of the gerrymandering debate.  I have often heard it debated that Operations Research may have created the politically polarized country we have today.  The same tools of Operations Research could be used to allow transparency in the redistricting process.  It could be useful for citizens to know how probable or likely outcomes of elections based on redistricting suggestions.  Websites like OpenSecrets.org shows how money influences party affiliation and elections.   Perhaps similar websites can emerge on electoral districts and the legislation that helped create them.

The debate of gerrymandering will last for centuries I am sure.  I believe Operations Research can play a vital part in the debate.   Information is more open and easy to access than ever.  Let's use that to our best ability and help inform the voting electorate.

OR-Exchange confession

I have a blogger confession to make about OR-Exchange. I am addicted. I think its the first Operations Research related social network that has me really hooked. I confess that I check it daily. Yes you can see that I've earned a silver badge for my continual obedience. Is this OR's Farmville? Well at least it is for me.

The premise for OR-Exchange is really simple. Think of an Operations Research related question that bugs you, puzzles you, or simply just want to get peer feedback. Shortly after, and I mean shortly, you will be barraged by answers from like minded individuals. The perfect storm that the Web 2.0 wants to fuel.

In my mind the beauty of OR-Exchange is that it is not any normal social network. This is a social network of peers that understand my issues, problems and concerns. Maybe its just my Generation X upbringing that requires instant gratification. Yet I don't need a whole lot of stimulating from other social networks. In fact I'm pretty much done with most of the others. The online media I keep going back to are the ones associated with my interests and for me that is OR-Exchange right now.

I love the feedback from the folks at OR-Exchange. Good, bad or indifferent it brings perspectives that I often don't get in my circles. In my present work I don't often get to chat up Operations Research with my co-workers. I'm one of two employees that has any knowledge of what is Operations Research. I guess that's where it benefits me. I'm hoping that it benefits others like us that either has to wait a year to go to an INFORMS conference. I am active in my local INFORMS Chapter but most of it is topical speeches and programs. OR-Exchange is more of an outlet which has filled a void for me.

I hope the Operations Research community can take on to OR-Exchange. I believe there can be only more good as more users come online. Please help preach its worth if you are using it. Perhaps there are many more unanswered questions in the Operations Research community.

My 5 favorite Operations Research blogs

I do a lot of blogging in my spare time. I especially like to read up on blogs that really interest me. My passion is what I do for a living which is, of course, Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. I am often amazed of the great writing and resources available in the online Operations Research community. So I thought I would share on this blog my 5 favorite blogs that I am usually checking every day. These blogs are not listed in any particular order.

1. Michael Trick's Operations Research blog

You can pretty much argue that Michael is the "Father of Operations Research blogs". Michael does a great job of mixing academia and real world applications of Operations Research. Often times the comment section is worth the read with great contributors to his blog.

2. Thoughts on business, engineering, and higher education by Aurelie Thiele

This blog by Auriele is probably some of the best writing in the Operations Research blogs. I particularly love the issues that Auriele presents on a weekly basis. In fact I'm outright jealous of Auriele's insight. This blog is just a flat out good read.

3. Punk Rock Operations Research

Punk Rock O.R.'s writer Laura McLay is another good Operations Research blogger that mixes academia and real life OR interests. I enjoy Laura's commentary on a lot of issues that you might not expect in mainstream OR applications. I especially like Laura's interests in sports.

4. Sebastian Pokutta's Blog

This blog may not be one of the most popular blogs but I really like Sebastian's Operations Research blog. Maybe the fact that I really relate to Sebastian's ideas and his endorsement of open source software in Operations Research. Sebastian finds really good nuggets in the OR world that you don't often see on other blogs.

5. ThinkOR

This blog is perhaps one of the best in writing real life Operations Research examples. I really enjoy the thoughtfulness of this blog and writing of this blog. I enjoy reading about ThinkOR's writing style of sifting through real world problems and dictating possible solutions.