Ron Yurko

ESPN's receiver scores have been updated through Week 4!

espnanalytics.com/receivers

🏈 The 8th annual NFL Big Data Bowl is here!

This year, we’re excited to launch two competitions in collaboration with NFL. Participants will use NFL player tracking (Next Gen Stats) to generate insights that enhance the game.

Pro tip: you can compete in both 😎
More info 👇

Thanks to NextGenStats and @awscloud.bsky.social for the partnership, @kaggle.com for hosting, and to all of our loyal participants for ensuring that our competition is changing the game

#BigDataBowl

The analytics competition will allow folks to creatively identify characteristics or visualizations of player movement, either on the offensive or defensive sides of the ball

www.kaggle.com/c/nfl-big-da...

The leaderboard competition will use the last 5 weeks of 2025 to identify who builds the best model/algorithm

www.kaggle.com/c/nfl-big-da...

The 2026 Big Data Bowl #BigDataBowl is live!

Participants can sign up for two competitions:
- leaderboard
- traditional analytics competition

This year's task: predict/understand player movement when the ball is in the air

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This is the most beautiful time of year here Jonathan...

www.cmu.edu/dietrich/new...

Great article on the cutting-edge #NFL #BigDataBowl data research by PhD student Quang Nguyen (@qntkhvn.bsky.social) - #Steelers fans should read this! Watt vs. Garrett? Metcalf vs. Pickens? Quang Nguyen Uses #NextGenStats To Evaluate Player Performance www.cmu.edu/dietrich/new...

Really enjoyed talking to @alex-andorra.bsky.social on @learnbayesstats.bsky.social! I've always enjoyed listening to this podcast and encourage you to check out all of the awesome episodes Alex has recorded: learnbayesstats.com #statistics #Bayesian #datascience #sportsanalytics

🏈 NFL meets Bayesian stats!

In this episode @alex-andorra.bsky.social chats with Ron Yurko on

👉 Writing your own models
👉 Building a sports analytics portfolio
👉 Pitfalls of modelling expectations
👉 Using tracking data for player insights
👉 Causal thinking in football data

🎧 lnkd.in/gWz4v2JG

SCORES: Idaho Department of Education releases 2025 ISATs The author was correct to begin the article by stating “overall scores remained mostly stable when compared to last year’s results.” However, I take issue with the author’s subsequent interpretation o...

I've seen a lot of incorrect uses and understandings of p-values, but this one made me do a literal LOL. It's a hilarious example of how a certain type of smug person who writes letters to the editor to take issue with news stories can get things so, so wrong. cdapress.com/news/2025/se...

GitHub - nickwan/2025-sabersem-inspo: not exactly replications, but loosely based not exactly replications, but loosely based. Contribute to nickwan/2025-sabersem-inspo development by creating an account on GitHub.

Spent the last week "replicating" several sabersem presentations from the last sabersem. Was pretty fun! Going to highlight each one I did here. Shoutout to @srbrown70.bsky.social for the list of slides, very helpful.

if you want the repo, it's here github.com/nickwan/2025...

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when are we going to see the Positron data viewer instead Seth??? positron.posit.co

October in Pittsburgh for some sports analytics.

I'm speaking, as is Alok Pattani, my former right hand at ESPN. We'll have stories to tell, for sure.

Don’t miss out the best #sportsanalytics conference out there!

Excited to host the godfather of #basketballanalytics @deanolytics.bsky.social as the Keynote Address at this year's Carnegie Mellon #SportsAnalytics Conference on Oct 24-25! You can REGISTER NOW to see talks by Dean and other leaders/experts in the field: www.cmsaconference.com #NBA

Screenshot of 2024 participation data from FTN

load_participation(): thanks to @realfrankbrank.bsky.social and @ftnfantasy.com, we're now able to have **historical** participation data similar to what we were previously pulling from NGS! This data is graciously provided to us after every season, and we now have complete 2023 and 2024 data avail.

Kenny Pickett has 1 game with more than 1 passing TD... and has now been traded 3 times @dannyheifetz.bsky.social

Personnel News

thef5.substack.com/p/personnel-...

Reminder that TOMORROW is the deadline to submit an abstract for the Carnegie Mellon #SportsAnalytics Conference (www.stat.cmu.edu/cmsac/confer...) #ReproducibleResearch competition! #statistics #datascience #AI

We talk more about visual posterior predictive checking and above plots in teemusailynoja.github.io/visual-predi....

The next bayesplot release will give a warning if PPC bar graphs are used with less than 6 unique outcome values, with a link to a page containing suggestions for better plots. 4/4

Jo Hardin, Pomona College - A Unified Framework for Random Forest Prediction Error Estimation - The Academic Minute On Pomona College Week: What is the Random Forest prediction model? Jo Hardin, professor of math and statistics and Hardison Chair of analytical thinking, explores how it works. Jo Hardin is Professor...

Curious about random forest prediction error estimation? Here's an accessible high level overview of this machine learning method from my Pomona College colleague Jo Hardin @hardin47.bsky.social
academicminute.org/jo-hardin-po...

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Submit your #sportsanalytics research abstracts by FRIDAY AUG 15TH for our annual #ReproducibleResearch Competition! www.cmsaconference.com/research-com...

Submit your work & please share with others (especially students) in your network! #CMSAC #statistics #datascience #sports #machinelearning

Photo of me holding a printed copy of my book

Draft cover art

Two -page spread showing graphs text and code

Two -page spread showing graphs text and code

#rstats So chuffed! I printed the first PDF copy of my book to see what it might look like in print! It will be printed in full color!

Visualizing Multivariate Data and Models in R

On the whole, looks good, but lots of tweaking to do.
It weighs in at ~440 pgs., so perhaps some cutting needed.