丁香园AV

Assistant professor Luke Bornn鈥檚 work in the growing field of sports analytics so impressed the NBA鈥檚 Sacramento Kings that they offered him the position of VP of Strategy and Analytics.

Not many faculty get the opportunity to literally get called up to the major leagues, but Bornn is an exception.  His interest in the burgeoning field has taken him from Electronic Arts to teaching positions at Harvard University and 丁香园AV鈥檚 department of Statistics and Actuarial Science. Throughout, he has maintained ties to professional sports, working closely with basketball, soccer, and baseball teams.

Luckily for Bornn, professional teams are starting to recognize the value of analytics. Bornn says, 鈥淓very team in MLB (Major League Baseball) is investing in analytics and it is just starting to catch on in basketball. If teams don鈥檛 invest in analytics, they鈥檒l soon be at a disadvantage because other teams will be benefiting from insights garnered from these huge amounts of data鈥�.

Bornn explains that massive amounts of data generated by a half-dozen cameras on the court track spatial and temporal movements of every player at 25 times per second. Analysis of hundreds of millions of rows of data per game allows scientists to turn information such how many times the player handled the ball, the speed at which he moves, how many passes he made and the number of rebounding opportunities he had, to determine which moves are the most advantageous and effective.

Besides predicting win-loss records, analytics can also be used in assessing new recruits and determining how they might fit in with the team.

Bornn says there is always a challenge in putting theory to practice, but he predicts his biggest hurdle will be how best to communicate his findings with coaches and team executives. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 just present a huge table of numbers, you have to visualize it and turn the information into actionable items. That means putting your findings into context, pointing out players who exemplify what you鈥檙e discussing and phrasing your findings into terms like 鈥渢his could make one more win鈥�.

Bornn advises students wanting to join the field to go above and beyond their studies and treat their academic background as a basic foundation. He says, 鈥淚f you want to stand out, use the tools you鈥檙e taught in school and take the extra time and effort to dig into the plethora of data that鈥檚 available publicly and focus on issues that are going to catch the coach鈥檚 attention.鈥�

Bornn says that in building his team, the best applicants have a love and knowledge of the game, strong programming and modeling skills and the proven ability to take raw data and turn it into practical insights.

丁香园AV students, however, just might have a leg up. Bornn declares, 鈥湺∠阍癆V is probably the best school in the world for sports analytics.鈥�

Interested 丁香园AV students may also join the