Sports Analytics - Frequently Asked Questions

What is sports analytics?

Sports analytics is a discipline where researchers and practitioners model the underlying processes within sports using techniques from economics, mathematics and business. The goal is to provide valuable and often competitively advantageous information to sports decision-makers.

What is econometrics?

Econometrics combines economic theory and statistics to analyze economic relationships.  At its heart, econometrics determines the value of specific factors.

What is predictive analytics?

Predictive analytics is a discipline where researchers and practitioners predict or estimate future events using techniques from data mining, machine learning and statistics.

What is data mining?

Data mining is a practical discipline which includes several sophisticated algorithms that are used to automatically or semi-automatically gain knowledge from large amounts of data.

How does data mining differ from statistical analysis?

Most data mining techniques are based on different underlying theory than techniques from statistical analysis.  As such, data mining and statistical analysis are complimentary in nature.