Project (on the advanced Sports statistic)

For the advanced statistic you’ve discussed in your paper, perform the following analysis (if possible–there was the ability to do something else in the paper if the sport you wanted to discuss didn’t have a good advanced stat, in that case, just choose another advanced stat from a different sport)

Determine how well the advanced stat is predictable from one year to the next.  In order to do this, gather data on at least 40 (and up to about 60) players and find the value of that advanced stat in the most recently completed season and the prior one (though if you used consecutive seasons that were completed, don’t worry about the exact seasons you’re using).  In order not to bias the results, pick the players as we discussed in class*.

Then once you have enough players, perform a regression, predicting one year’s advanced stat based on the previous season’s.  Discuss the results and interpret them–how much variation is explained using the model, what is the equation that the regression determines, and what do the numbers in the regression equation mean?

Provide the data, regression results, and the (brief–about one page) writeup of the results.

*to have unbiased results, I mentioned to look at teams selected randomly (or at least without picking the best or worst–perhaps by division) and find those players in the most recently completed season who played significant minutes who were starters (so look for them to have played in at least 75% of the possible games played, with minutes approaching starting minutes–or however else you might separate starters from reserve players).  Then see if they had met the same criteria (for playing time and number of games) in the previous season, and if they did, inlclude them in the data.

You would then have a table in excel that would look like: (sorry, the formatting is probably bad, but hopefully you get the idea)

Player________Stat (this year)________Stat (last year)

Player A ________ 56   ____________________  35

Player B ________  26 _____________________ 29

Player C _________ 15  ____________________ 6