Ron Yurko

Congratulations to the one and only @statsinthewild.bsky.social for winning the 2025 ASA Section on Statistics in Sports Significant Contributor Award. #truehero #jsm2025

Good choice, but I will always choose The Rubberband Man by The Spinners for any walk-up song

a man wearing a cowboy hat and an american flag shirt says `` god , i feel born again . '' ALT: a man wearing a cowboy hat and an american flag shirt says `` god , i feel born again . ''

I cannot emphasize enough how incredible #positron is for instructors that teach courses/programs spanning multiple programming languages - thank you @posit.co for making my life easier

Want to present at ASI? There are two ways to participate: {arrow pointing right to scroll}

Call for Proposals. Deadline: September 1, 2025. Brought to you by SkillCorner.

Call for abstracts. Apply to present a contributed talk. Deadline: October 1 2025.

Interested in presenting?

There are two ways to showcase your work at the 2026 ASI Summit. For more information on submitting proposals and abstracts, visit:

americansoccerinsights.com

an older man in a suit and tie is standing in front of a field with his eyes closed . ALT: an older man in a suit and tie is standing in front of a field with his eyes closed .

Started using #positron for writing #python class material... next thing I know I'm writing #Rstats scripts in it and I keep looking at RStudio in my dock

Save the date (June 15-18, 2026) for the Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics, call for proposals to follow this fall
www.causeweb.org/cause/ecots/...

As sports betting sweeps campuses, two Pa. professors will teach students gambling safety Two Pennsylvania professors are launching a course on sports betting after noticing an explosion of gambling among college students.

Read more about the course:

A new course offered at Carnegie Mellon will analyze one of the nation's hottest hobbies: sports betting.

Statistician Ron Yurko and neuroscience professor Linda Moya will co-teach the seminar, examining the science behind the odds and addictive decision-making.

#SportsBetting | #stats

#CMSAC will in be full force at #NESSIS this September at Harvard!

many thanks to @datawithbliss.bsky.social for his insights on the latter!

Excited for #CMSAC at #NESSIS! www.nessis.org
+ PhD student Michele Sezgin's poster: Does furosemide make horses run faster?
+ @qntkhvn.bsky.social talk: #NFL change of direction arxiv.org/abs/2507.06122
+ Myself (w/ @recspecs730.bsky.social) talk: College Football Volatility #sportsanalytics

Excited to share that our recent work on modeling change of direction in the NFL (arxiv.org/abs/2507.06122) has been selected for an invited talk at 2025 #NESSIS (nessis.org). Harvard bound again!

As sports betting sweeps campuses, two Pa. professors will teach students gambling safety Two Pennsylvania professors are launching a course on sports betting after noticing an explosion of gambling among college students.

Many thanks to Bethany Rodgers @usatoday.com for the write-up about the new #sportsbetting course I'll be co-teaching w/ Dr Linda Moya this upcoming spring 2026 semester as part of CMU Dietrich College's Grand Challenge seminar program www.goerie.com/story/news/2...

Only Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player have won the Open, Masters and PGA Championship before age 30.

On Sunday, Scottie Scheffler joined them.

@gabbyherzig.bsky.social has more on his dominant Open performance ⤵️
www.nytimes.com/athletic/650...

The Satchel Paige Project Intro Since late 2023 I have been on a quest to log every pitching appearance in the extraordinary life and baseball career of Satchel Paige. From age 19 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to oldtimers gam…

BREAKING: Public Launch of Satchel Paige Project

marklaurencearmour.wordpress.com/2084-2/

There is a short explainer on my website, then you click on the map and see where it takes you. Please pass this around to anyone you think might be interested

Wharton Moneyball on X: "Today's show is available in Podcast Form NOW! Alan Nathan, Professor Emeritus of Physics at University of Illinois on baseball bat construction and the physical factors that impacted the Home Run Derby HR Derby | Cal Raleigh | MLB Post-All Star | Wimbledon Listen HERE:" / X Today's show is available in Podcast Form NOW! Alan Nathan, Professor Emeritus of Physics at University of Illinois on baseball bat construction and the physical factors that impacted the Home Run Derby HR Derby | Cal Raleigh | MLB Post-All Star | Wimbledon Listen HERE:

x.com/WMoneyball/s...

With the MLB All-Star game tonight, here is how MLB divisions would look if they were created purely to minimize the average distance between teams.

Avg distance between teams in same division:
- Current: 606 miles
- Optimal: 421 miles

Super cool work by @qntkhvn.bsky.social & @stat-ron.bsky.social

Check out the latest #CMSAC #sportsanalytics research w/ #BigDataBowl data by @qntkhvn.bsky.social on modeling #NFL player change of direction: arxiv.org/pdf/2507.06122 this is a component of Quang's recent thesis proposal and I'm excited for more to come (he does all the work, I just opine)

Or perhaps a better title would be “Curious, George” (since Kittle and Pickens are the shiftiest among TEs and WRs)

Of course, what could've been another great metric name...

We find that ball carriers within the TE & WR positions (w/ more open-field, unstructured movements) differ more in their turn angle variability compared to RBs

We fit a von Mises mixed-effects model for the turn angle, modeling both the mean and concentration parameters.

We include ball carrier random effects at the concentration level, with variance grouped by position.

This reveals the shiftiest players with high variability in turning behavior.

Using #BigDataBowl tracking data, we model the instantaneous turn angle (i.e. the angle a player takes between consecutive steps; inspired by the animal movement literature) for NFL ball carriers.

We focus on RBs after handoff and RBs/TEs/WRs after the catch.

New #CMSAC #SportsAnalytics paper on evaluating change of direction in the #NFL by myself and @stat-ron.bsky.social

arxiv.org/pdf/2507.06122

Spoiler alert: DK Metcalf displays straight-line, less agile movement, while George Pickens exhibits erratic, more variable directional movement.