Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100914/12140611007/dailydirt-digging-into-sports-statistics.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100914/12140611007/dailydirt-digging-into-sports-statistics.shtml

Looking at the stats for 452 NBA players, there are far more than the five traditional positions in basketball -- try 13 different kinds of players. The 'Paint Protector' position gets more fouls than shots and collects rebounds like crazy. The 'Scoring Rebounder' might be a more highly-paid player, though. [url]

The NBA wants to provide more engaging statistics to its fans, so it's turned to enterprise software solutions -- SAP HANA. Will re-purposed business analytics software be able to appeal to millions of fans? [url]

The PageRank algorithm can be applied to soccer players, based on how many passes a player receives from his teammates, to help analyze how players fit into a team and quantify the overall strength of a team. Obviously, this algorithm has several limitations, but soccer isn't as statistic-friendly as other sports, so data analysis strategies for soccer are not as well developed. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100914/12140611007 Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:14:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110323/04095313599/nielsen-sues-comscore-with-patent-it-once-was-sued-infringing.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110323/04095313599/nielsen-sues-comscore-with-patent-it-once-was-sued-infringing.shtml "5675510") for the invention of a "computer use meter and analyzer," has now sued competitor Comscore over the same patent, which it eventually came into possession of after settling the lawsuit by buying the patent from Jupiter Media Metrix. Once again, however, this seems to demonstrate the pointlessness of the patent system. Metering and analyzing internet traffic is something that came about because everyone needed it and lots of people tried to tackle the problem. No one went into that space because there was the availability of a patent. People got into the space because there was a need and a market. And, now, Nielsen seems to want to beat the competition not through competing with better products, but by suing over a questionable patent.

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]]> destructive-force-of-patents http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110323/04095313599