December 2005 Archives

I downloaded all the data from the first 7 weeks of the fantasy basketball season, for the purpose of analysis. The goal was to identify statistical categories that I should target for improvement.

The data I chose to select was each team's final number in each category for each week. I disregarded whether the team was superior to its head-to-head opponent in that category. I just took the raw number, so that I could rank ALL the teams in a given category.

So, one line of it looks like this:

Once all the data was entered for each team and week, I then sorted the teams within each week, and assigned a rank for each category. For instance, in week 1, Andrew's Ballas ranked 12 in FG% with .397, Cameroon Robusto ranked 3 in FG% with .471, and so on.

With this process complete, I computed my average weekly rank in each category. On one particular statistic, my average rank was 9.3, out of 12 teams. I can only expect to win that category a couple of times over the whole season. In fact, it would probably be a waste to try to improve that category, as I'm likely to lose it virtually every week. In another category, my average rank was 1.4! That number is so high, I probably have too many specialists in that particular statistic. I want to win as many categories as possible, not win categories by as much as possible.

The categories I'm most interested in are the middle ones. I have four stats for which my average rank ranges between 4 and 8. If I can improve those by giving up some of my strength in my strongest couple of categories, or by giving up a player who excels in one of my weakest categories, I'm likely to improve my weekly results.

This approach doesn't take into account the fact that I have different players counting toward my total each week, as I bench the ones that are likely to be less productive. It also doesn't take into account the trades and free agent moves I've made. Nevertheless, I haven't been transforming my team drastically on a week-to-week basis, and since these numbers represent the actual performance of my team as a whole, they should be effective in guiding my strategy.

I intend to use these results to drive mutually beneficial trades between my team and others in the league. Teams: Do not fear my science. I seek fair trades that improve us both.

UPDATE: The player behind LoopersHoopers points out that my system doesn't evaluate head-to-head performance, and after all, our league is a head-to-head league. An alternate approach might be to take my team's performance and evaluate it against every other team in the league, for each week, and see what categories I tend to lose, and by how much, and what week-end tallies I tend to get. Identifying categories where I tend to lose by a small amount would be another fine targeting method.

To win the league, you must qualify for the playoffs, by finishing 6th or higher, and win your head-to-head matchups on those final weeks, so this approach might best prepare a team for the playoffs. My team is currently ranked sixth, so I believe general shoring up of statistics is the approach that best serves me currently.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

What are you afraid of in this world? Being bitten by a venomous snake (3 US deaths in 2002)? Dog attack (18 deaths)? Earthquakes (31 deaths)?

Fear not these things. Fear hot tap water, responsible for 40 US deaths in 2002.

Now, you may say, I have heard of a lot of things, but not dying of hot tap water. It's just water! How can it harm me?

Well, you can get scalded. And scalded means burnt.

Canada takes this stuff seriously. They study it. Hot tapwater is responsible for 150 severe and life-changing traumatic injuries to children in Canada annually. The elderly and individuals with disabilities are also prone to this type of injury. They recommend turning your hot water heater down from 140°F to 120°F. Well, no. They recommend law that requires hot water heaters to be turned down to a safer level. "But can I still have a piping hot bath?" you may ask. That, I do not know.

Last fact on death by hot tap water:
Annual deaths by contact with hot tap water vary country to country, but the leader is Japan, with 143. Second is the United States, with 55. We must like our water nice and hot. And third, inexplicably, is Hungary. They must have some crazy water heaters out there. Or, maybe cultural differences. Children are allowed to draw their own baths? I'm grasping at straws. Complete country rankings are here.