Jeremy Alexander – Impact of Team Numerical Advantage in Australian Rules Football

Monday, November 2nd, 2020
Jeremy Alexander (Victoria University)
The Impact of a Team Numerical Advantage on Match Play in Australian Rules Football

See a recording below.

The advent of player tracking technologies has supported a more detailed approach to the match analysis of invasion sports. Studies to date that have investigated tactical team behaviour by measuring how players occupy different sub-areas on a playing field in football have inferred performance by assessing a team’s capacity to generate a numerical advantage over a specific area. As such, a limited understanding exists between a team’s numerical advantage and the impact on match play in a continuous manner. Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to provide a proof of concept that determines the relationship between a team numerical advantage and match play in a continuous manner. The secondary aim was to determine how ball position and match phase influence how players occupy different sub-areas of play in Australian Rules Football.

Tutorial: Web Scraping

Information
Our first tutorial took place on Friday, October 23rd at 7:00pm EST. If you missed it, check out the notebook we used at https://utoronto-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/eth_baron_mail_utoronto_ca/EaRu6yXz9M1MuO5VBZ0ed6EBocTIFdpsiTgoDMmasYtqNA?e=73asnW.

Learn how to web scrape
Web Scraping is a valuable tool, especially for those that enjoy creating independent coding projects. It allows for more creative projects by giving the user the ability to obtain their own niche data. This tutorial will focus on the fundamentals of how to web scrape, with additional focus on how a webpage is broken down and how to clean your obtained data.

Kenneth Brent Smale – Transitioning from Academia to Industry: Analytics in Pro Sports

Friday, October 30th, 2020
Kenneth Brent Smale (Los Angeles Angels, Apex Skating)
Transitioning from Academia to Industry: Analytics in Pro Sports

Check out the recording below.

As a student, the bulk of your training in analytics comes in the classroom and is heavily involved in the theory and simple strong signal-to-noise examples. In reality, and particularly in sports, things get much noisier with true data and different personalities and stakeholders. Kenneth Smale will talk through just how analytics differs from academia to the industry and provide guidance on how to make the transition as easy as possible.

Dani Chu – It’s Fun Getting Into (Foul) Trouble

Wednesday, October 14th, 2020, 6:00pm EST
Dani Chu (Seattle Kraken)
It’s Fun Getting Into (Foul) Trouble

This project investigates the fouling time distribution of players in the National Basketball Association. A Bayesian analysis is presented based on the assumption that fouling times follow a Gamma distribution. Methods are developed that will allow coaches to better manage their players under the threat of fouling out.

See a recording of the presentation below.

Abdullah Zafar – Mathematical Modelling in Professional Sport

Friday, October 9th, 2020, 6:00pm EST
Abdullah Zafar (Sports Performance Analytics Inc.)
Mathematical Modelling in Professional Sport

How to quantify actions in sport in order to build metrics, get insights, and drive performance? In this talk, we will overview, compare and contrast approaches using football (soccer) data from the Danish Superliga; focusing on how we can model the movement of a team using flow fields and dynamical systems, derive metrics to quantify team tempo, and then demonstrate the utility and application to the physical training of players as well as team performance as a whole. We will then break down tempo further using topological time series analysis to better understand the dynamics of a football match and highlight the difference in teams during goal-scoring moments.

For a recording of the presentation see below.