Tuesday, August 30, 2005

What I'm working on currently



As anyone who reads this blog can tell, I love playing around with statistics. For a while now, I've been working on a big project. I am making a database of all MLS teams' results and lineups, for easy access in an excel file. Mlsnet already has pages like this, but they don't have the lineups and goalscorers. In addition, I am including every official MLS team result. This includes the playoffs, Open Cup, and any continental competition (but not friendlies or friendly tournaments like La Manga).

90% of the lineups are easy to find. If you go to history on mlsnet, they recently (finally) added the day-by-day results from past years that used to be on their site. There are a ton of broken links, though (including the entire 2001 season!). The Open Cup games I can find on www.usopencup.com, and the rest on Soccer America.

I'm currently working on Tampa Bay, which is the last of the 12 teams (I won't add this year's results until after the season). Once I get done, then I have to go through and check the lineups for each team's MLS season, to make sure they match mlsnet's stats for appearances/starts. That's gonna suck, but I need to have it 100% accurate.

But the exciting part is this: While I was doing this, I got the idea to see if teams who played with the same starting XI in consecutive matches won more, as you would think. I did that for several teams, but then I realized that it would be better to go through and instead count the number of starters returning, rather than just worry about all XI. So that's going to be a lot of work, but it should be pretty cool to see the results. I'll be sure to post all the details and analysis here, don't worry. I'll probably wait until the season is over, so I can add this year's data.

And also, I'll make the excel files available when I'm finished. Here's a sample page:

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Comments on "What I'm working on currently"

 

Blogger D said ... (7:47 AM, August 30, 2005) : 

That is very cool. And something I would kill to have. Well, that's a strong word. But I would love to see the Excel files, and maybe even convert them into an Access DB.

 

Blogger scaryice said ... (5:38 PM, August 30, 2005) : 

I'm not familiar with Access. What does that do exactly?

 

Blogger D said ... (8:50 AM, August 31, 2005) : 

Excel is a spreadsheet program. Access is the Relational Database Microsoft sibling of Excel. Allows one to place data in multiple tables and use Relational Database abilities to analyze it

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (12:18 PM, September 01, 2005) : 

Excellent. Thanks for all your hard work!

 

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