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Basketball Data Science Mathematics NBA NBA Playoffs Uncategorized

So, What’s Wrong with the Knicks?

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 […]

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Basketball Data Analytics Data Science Mathematics NBA NBA Finals NBA Playoffs Sports Statistics

Basketball Machine Learning Paper Updated 

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 . 

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Basketball Data Analytics Data Science Mathematics NBA NBA Finals NBA Playoffs Sports Statistics

The Most Optimal Strategy for the Knicks

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 […]

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Basketball Data Analytics Data Science Mathematics NBA NBA Finals NBA Playoffs NCAA Statistics

Analyzing Lebron James’ Offensive Play

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 […]

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Data Analytics Data Science Mathematics Politics Science Statistics

The Relationship Between The Electoral College and Popular Vote

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 […]

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Basketball Chicago Bulls Data Analytics Data Science Mathematics NBA NBA Finals NBA Playoffs Science Sports Statistics Toronto

Breaking Down the 2015-2016 NBA Season

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” […]

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Basketball Chicago Bulls Data Analytics Data Science Mathematics NBA NBA Finals NBA Playoffs NCAA Sports Statistics

Optimal Positions for NBA Players

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 […]

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Elections Mathematics Politics Statistics

Optimal Strategies for the Clinton/Trump Debate

Consider modelling the Clinton/Trump debate via a static game in which each candidate can choose between two strategies: , where denotes predominantly “attacking” the other candidate, while denotes predominantly discussing policy positions. Further, let us consider the mixed strategies for Clinton, and for Trump. That is, Clinton predominantly attacks Trump with probability , and Trump predominantly […]

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Basketball Data Analytics Data Science NBA NBA Finals NBA Playoffs Sports Statistics

Basketball Paper Update

Everyone by now knows about this paper I wrote a few months ago: http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.05266 Using data science / machine learning methodologies, it basically showed that the most important factors in characterizing a team’s playoff eligibility are the opponent field goal percentage and the opponent points per game. This seems to suggest that defensive factors as […]

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Data Analytics Data Science Politics Statistics

Will Donald Trump’s Proposed Immigration Policies Curb Terrorism in The US?

In recent days, Donald Trump proposed yet another iteration of his immigration policy which is focused on “Keeping America Safe” as part of his plan to “Make America Great Again!”. In this latest iteration, in addition to suspending visas from countries with terrorist ties, he is also proposing introducing an ideological test for those entering […]