Analyzing Sports Data to Interpret Intangible Skills Within the Discipline in Order to Design an Application by Sean L.

Each year, sports franchises waste millions of dollars signing players to huge contracts, betting on them to become their next franchise cornerstone lead the team to victory, but in the end, greatly disappointed. Other teams, however, salvage their franchise player in the 6th round of the draft, wasting little money for a player that brings home a championship, forever embedding the team in history. But how exactly does one find that franchise player who will lead the team to victory, and how exactly does one avoid drafting a bust? The answer lies in the ability to measure the intangible abilities...All legendary athletes possess a 6th sense for the game, the calmness during the biggest moment, the ability to perceive the game slower than it actually is; it is what sets the greatest players apart from the simply good players, and what sets good players apart from complete failures. Therefore, recognition of these intangible abilities is key to making the right draft choices, signing free agents, and giving players multi-million dollar, extensive contracts. However, by studying film, sports analytics, and trends, it is possible not only recognize intangible traits, but also develop models to calculate these intangibles. For this reason, sports analytics is the future of sports operations and management...Research, preparation, and execution of the project shall be divided into four parts: research on attributes and aesthetics that cause an app to appeal to the human eye; research on sports data and development of models to measure intangible abilities; familiarization with technology and tools necessary to create the app; and the development of the app itself...Research on attributes and aesthetics will be the first step in designing the app. When putting an app on the global market, one is competing with thousands of other developers who recently put their apps on the market as well...The next step in designing the app will involve research on sports data, noticing trends in the data, and utilizing that sports data to develop algorithms for calculating intangibles. This is arguably the most important step in the research project, as the algorithms and models developed are the basis of the app. Each intangible ability will be numerically measured, as if it were a normal statistic, and will be calculated via formulas, algorithms, and models...