Based on a previous paper I wrote that used machine learning to determine the most relevant factors for teams making the NBA playoffs, I did some further analysis in an attempt to come up with an equation that outputs the probability of an NBA team making the playoffs in a given season. From the aforementioned […]
Tag: Statistics
A very interesting result: computing payoffs of players, the following is a diagram that shows when it is optimal for a player to shoot a 2 point or a 3-point shot. One sees that it is hardly ever optimal for a player to shoot a 3-point shot, since the region corresponding to 3-point optimality is […]
By: Dr. Ikjyot Singh Kohli It seems that one cannot turn on ESPN or any YouTube channel nowadays without the ongoing debate of whether Michael Jordan is better than Lebron, what would happen if Michael Jordan played in today’s NBA, etc… However, I have not seen a single scientific approach to this question. Albeit, it […]
By: Dr. Ikjyot Singh Kohli As I write this post, the Knicks are currently 12th in the Eastern conference with a record of 22-32. A plethora of people are offering the opinions on what is wrong with the Knicks, and of course, most of it being from ESPN and the New York media, most of […]
I have now made a significant update to my applied machine learning paper on predicting patterns among NBA playoff and championship teams, which can be accessed here: arXiv Link .
In a previous article, I showed how one could use data in combination with advanced probability techniques to determine the optimal shot / court positions for LeBron James. I decided to use this algorithm on the Knicks’ starting 5, and obtained the following joint probability density contour plots: One sees that the Knicks offensive strategy […]
Where is Lebron James most effective on the court? Based on 2015-2016 data, we obtained from NBA.com the following data which tracks Lebron’s FG% based on defender distance: From Basketball-Reference.com, we then obtained data of Lebron’s FG% based on his shot distance from the basket: Based on this data, we generated tens of thousands of […]
An interesting machine learning problem: Can one figure out the relationship between the popular vote margin, voter turnout, and the percentage of electoral college votes a candidate wins? Going back to the election of John Quincy Adams, the raw data looks like this: Electoral College Party Popular vote Margin (%) Turnout Percentage of EC John […]
In this article, I will use Data Science / Machine Learning methodologies to break down the real factors separating the playoff from non-playoff teams. In particular, I used the data from Basketball-Reference.com to associate 44 predictor variables which each team: “FG” “FGA” “FG.” “X3P” “X3PA” “X3P.” “X2P” “X2PA” “X2P.” “FT” “FTA” “FT.” “ORB” “DRB” “TRB” […]
I was thinking about how one can use the NBA’s new SportVU system to figure out optimal positions for players on the court. One of the interesting things about the SportVU system is that it tracks player coordinates on the court. Presumably, it also keeps track of whether or not a player located at makes […]
