Blog Plan

[jburke01]

We want to use spatial data to look at demographics that affect the draft-picking process for Basketball, Hockey, and Football. For instance, something we are looking to address is if a team is more likely to pick a player from the same region as the home team. Or, does a player’s demographics affect which professional sports team they are drafted to? The user will be able to view data from the last 10 years for each team. We want to see if there are any patterns for teams selecting players from a certain region. We plan to represent each player on a spatial data visualization, most likely a country map of the United States. We will also have an interactive map which will allow the user to view certain statistics for the drafted players. We can also extend this project on a global scale by including international players for these respective sports.

By the first checkpoint, we plan to have all of our datasets wrangled and start thinking about what variables to include in our visualizations. Then by the second checkpoint we will have spatial maps for each sport and combine these visualizations into a Shiny App. By the time we present and get feedback, we can make changes to our visualizations and see if anything else needs to be included in our Shiny App. Our final blog post will include a summary of the patterns we found as well as any future applications of this project.

The link to our datasets can be found here: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/mattop/nhl-draft-hockey-player-data-1963-2022 https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/benwieland/nba-draft-data https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/jdk5115/nfl-draft-20002021 https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/jacklichtenstein/espn-nfl-draft-prospect-data?select=nfl_draft_prospects.csv

[katcorr]

I like your idea to pivot to look at something new, demographics and the draft-picking process. I'm not sure I understand how each play will be represented on a spatial data visualization -- can you be more explicit about what would be plotted on such a map?

It would also be helpful to add more detail to your schedule / timeline. Are you planning to meet weekly as well to discuss and then code individually at another time? Or would you work on some coding together? I think it could be beneficial to dedicate some meeting time to coding together, although if your schedules don't permit for much meeting time, then that may be difficult.

Proposal: 10/10

[jburke01]

Status Update 1 So far we have all started our wrangling process and are at separate stages of the process. According to our schedule, we all had planned for the wrangling of each sport to be done by the end of the week. Even though I believe that this can still happen I think we are a bit behind by the literal sense of where we wanted to be. In terms of what is completed at the moment, for the NHL sport I have wrangled the data to get the metric that I will be using for some visualizations on the spatial map. The data needed some serious wrangling when it came to country name because the countries were abbreviated and different abbreviations than the map library so I had to go through and make the entries even. Once I got that done, I made a metric that gave me the value of each pick by dividing the amount of games played by the point share variable. I then made a metric for points per game then related to the pick that players were drafted in. The world map that I am going to make will reflect where the best value of picks come from and that is where I have gotten so far wrangling the NHL dataset. In the football dataset, Olivia in her process has chose what variables that she will be working with. She has also imported the code for the map and start implementing the dataset with the map. Sriyash has started wrangling the basketball dataset and is almost finished cleaning up the data to make it better for implementing the map code. In order for our team to get back on track we will need to get together over the weekend and probably evaluate where we are as a group. I think that the break allowed the deadline to sneak up on us and as a group we were not able to accomplish as much as we had planned but by meeting this weekend and putting in extra work I believe we will get back on track soon.

[katcorr]

Ok! Sounds like a good plan to meet this weekend and get back on track. Update 1: 5/5

[jburke01]

Status Update 2 Since the last update, I believe we have gotten much farther along in the process. According to our plan, we would have visualizations completed and we would combine them into a Shiny app. As of now, I think we have decided to pivot from the shiny app and just show our visualizations using ggplot and embedding them into our blog. I think we still have a lot of hard work to do before the feedback session next week. I believe that the blog is going to take significant time to type in order to present it so that is why I have already started to format it and type some content into it. This is further along schedule then we thought we would be so that is a good sign. In terms of things we have completed, I have completed some additional wrangling tasks that I needed. I have decided to pivot when it comes to the world map and make two separate maps that include one for goalies and one for players for the nhl dataset. I have also decided that I will make another visualizations representing which teams make the best valued picks. I have also started to write content that will be included in the final blog. In the football dataset, Olivia has completed the wrangling and has created a country map to represent different variables. In the basketball data, Sriyash is in the process of creating a spatial map for his data he has also finished wrangling his data. I believe the best thing for our group to make sure we are prepared for the presentation and eventually the deadline of this project, is to meet a few times in the next week to set up clear objectives that each of us has to complete. I also believe that we need to have a plan of how we will show the small groups next week our blog so that we are on the same page and we have a productive presentation. It is important for us to be finished a majority of our blog by next week so that we can get ample feedback in order to fine tune it for the deadline. If we just continue to do work at the pace we are on I feel that there will be no trouble getting this project completed.

[katcorr]

Ok! Update 2: 5/5

RE: " I believe the best thing for our group to make sure we are prepared for the presentation and eventually the deadline of this project, is to meet a few times in the next week to set up clear objectives that each of us has to complete." I agree -- this is a good idea!