R, March Madness, and the Statistics of Basketball

Back in February, Mark Cuban announced on his blog that the Dallas Mavericks use a “player lineup and evaluation system” based on statistical analysis (generating some controversy, as it turned out). A New York Times Magazine article a week later reveals that the Rockets have a similar system in place. Ars Technica suggests that the analyses were heavily supplemented by data from high-tech stats packages like the open source program “R”. It wouldn’t be at all surprising: R has been used to analyze March Madness bracketology before, so it makes sense that it would be used to analyze the performance…

Back in February, Mark Cuban announced on his blog that the Dallas Mavericks use a "player lineup and evaluation system" based on statistical analysis (generating some controversy, as it turned out). A New York Times Magazine article a week later reveals that the Rockets have a similar system in place. Ars Technica suggests that the analyses were heavily supplemented by data from high-tech stats packages like the open source program "R". It wouldn't be at all surprising: R has been used to analyze March Madness bracketology before, so it makes sense that it would be used to analyze the performance of individual players, too.