A little bit of shameless self-promotion here, but some research I've been doing using the economics of sport has just been reviewed in the Guardian.
We detect using Opta data discrimination by Premiership referees. Before you jump out of your seat and shout down the nearest Premiership referee, this is implicit discrimination - i.e. referees are unaware they are discriminating.
This is an example of discovering evidence for something that interests economists using information (data) from sport. It's something I do a lot in my research - in sport we observe individuals making a large amount of decisions under varying degrees of uncertainty and pressure. Given that sport has generally quite simple rules that all participants are well aware of, and is very well measured and documented, this makes it interesting to be used for economists to conduct research.
This blog accompanies the econ217ab Contemporary Issues in the UK Economy course provided for intermediate economics undergraduates by the Department of Economics at the University of Birmingham. We will post on issues that are relevant for the material we lecture on during the course.
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Friday, October 5, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Moneyball UK
If you're a football fan and an economist, you may have come across Moneyball, the story of some data junkies who revolutionised how teams approach baseball in the US, and you may have seen the response of many cynics to Liverpool's attempt to adopt statistical techniques to augment their pursuit of success.
Sadly for those cynics, Manchester City provide the ultimate rebuttal of their sneering at the use of statistics in football, as this Guardian article shows. Vincent Kompany, a man whose stock never seems to stop rising, instigated weekly reviews of highly detailed OPTA data on City's defensive performances on arrival at the club, and it's hard to argue that they didn't help, since City were one of the best defensive sides in the league last season (and the one before that).
However, for those of you football fans and studiers of econ217ab, there's a huge opportunity coming your way. City are setting up MCFCAnalytics from today, and at 5pm are releasing OPTA data from the 2011-12 season free of charge. This kind of data costs thousands of pounds usually, yet it's precisely the kind of data necessary to pursue theories about how football works - have you got a budding theory about why City kept winning? About why teams always win at home? You can start now to investigate it as the data will be available!
I'd like to specifically encourage you ahead of your third year, when you'll write your extended essay. Data like this could form the basis of a fascinating essay. I've currently got students looking into how and why players trust each other, I've done research personally on whether Premiership referees discriminate, and have many plans for future research projects using this kind of data. Making use of this data to either look at footballing strategy or test economic theories will be one of the options you can choose at the end of the coming year when you start thinking about your extended essay...
Sadly for those cynics, Manchester City provide the ultimate rebuttal of their sneering at the use of statistics in football, as this Guardian article shows. Vincent Kompany, a man whose stock never seems to stop rising, instigated weekly reviews of highly detailed OPTA data on City's defensive performances on arrival at the club, and it's hard to argue that they didn't help, since City were one of the best defensive sides in the league last season (and the one before that).
However, for those of you football fans and studiers of econ217ab, there's a huge opportunity coming your way. City are setting up MCFCAnalytics from today, and at 5pm are releasing OPTA data from the 2011-12 season free of charge. This kind of data costs thousands of pounds usually, yet it's precisely the kind of data necessary to pursue theories about how football works - have you got a budding theory about why City kept winning? About why teams always win at home? You can start now to investigate it as the data will be available!
I'd like to specifically encourage you ahead of your third year, when you'll write your extended essay. Data like this could form the basis of a fascinating essay. I've currently got students looking into how and why players trust each other, I've done research personally on whether Premiership referees discriminate, and have many plans for future research projects using this kind of data. Making use of this data to either look at footballing strategy or test economic theories will be one of the options you can choose at the end of the coming year when you start thinking about your extended essay...
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