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July 25, 2008
Introduction
Hello. This blog is an experiment. Here's the (brief) back story. I'm a graduate student in the School of Information @ Michigan (hence the MBlog). I've been playing fantasy football every year since I was in high school (back in 2001). These days, I play against the undergrads in my old fraternity back at Michigan State University. Every year, before the season, I try to run some statistical analysis on NFL data and hope the computer will assist me in making better picks. Last year, I was in last place.
However, this year since I've started at Grad School, I've built up a wider repertoire of statistical analysis tools: grad-level stats, the R software package, courses in recommender and reputation systems. I should be able to generate better figures (especially comparative figures) than I have been able to in the past, when I had to rely on basic algebra and weightings.
Here's the plan for this year:
1. Scrape all the game-by-game boxscores for 2001-07 from nfl.com
2. Use the box scores to generate an estimated points-per-game for each player
3. Build simple z-scores (I'll explain this more later) for each player in each game.
4. Run comparative player analysis' to determine which players are good against which teams.
5. Use this information to figure out who I should draft and play in every week.
6. Scrape the league information to determine the status of other player's teams.
Also, I will plan to slap all of my findings online in a simple website.
Posted by haydenth at July 25, 2008 09:31 PM