Oddacious


Collecting my notes on sports analytics and other assorted topics

In which a correlation test is not enough

538 could have made a better case against intra-team balance

The details that are needed to have an intelligent opinion on the matter simply are not present. I don't know whether the claim is right or wrong, but this doesn't bring me any closer to that.

Ranking playoff goalies

The best and worst goalie playoffs of the last decade

Okay, I know you've been waiting for it, let's get to the worst goalie performances in the last decade. Prepare yourselves, this is gonna be ugly.

Man Down

Should we consider shorthanded stats when evaluating goalies?

For anyone hoping that this post has some connection with the Rihanna song, let me just send you to the Youtube link now and we can avoid some impending disappointment.

30 days in San Francisco's Mission, in living colour

A visual tour of my first month in SF

My vantage point has to begin with the Mission, the geographic and social centre of my experience thus far. This is where I live, the focal point from which I visit the rest of the city and region.

Woops, I hijacked your Venmo account

A worrisome oversight in Venmo authentication

Venmo advises that 'if you have a Venmo account, we'll send you a password reset link that you can use to sign into Venmo!' The first six words are redundant.

And the winner is...

Hockey Pool Part 4: Season wrap-up

For a long time I was further ahead of second place than second was from last. That gave me the freedom to play patiently. But even I knew it would end. Good luck is dangerous, when it balances out with bad.

How The Green Mile is like American History X

I built a film recommendation engine, and now you can too

Why do we like movies? There's a social aspect, yet many of us will gladly watch them on our own. It's because we love a good story. Those of us who appreciate film the most see it as an art form with incredible complexity and beauty.

Where the Puck Stops

New techniques for evaluating goaltenders in hockey

Is Steve Mason really the top goalie in the NHL? I’m going to take my shot (shot, get it?) at this question, building upon existing methods. But before I go into that, let me break down why this is worth looking into.

NBA March Madness

How to bring the world's best tournament to the world's top basketball league

For sports fans, March Madness is an event like no other. It’s where the top 64+ teams in college basketball get together to play a win-or-go-home single elimination tournament. Every year I wonder why the NBA doesn’t get in on the action.

Looking to Year 2

Hockey Pool Part 3: Models and draft strategy

So let's talk a little bit about another drafter child, the simul_drafter (or “Sim” for short), and how I designed her. Sim can, at each pick, simulate the rest of the draft. Then Sim calculates how far ahead or behind our resulting team is, by our team-level metric, versus the best other team (I could compare against average, but really I want to be able to beat the next best team). If I do this across a selection of players, I can figure out which one resulted in the best overall pick.