Good news from the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

I got some good news this past week: I was selected as a finalist for the research paper contest at the Sloan Sports Analytics conference.  I’m extremely excited, and quite surprised.  While I do think the “price of anarchy in basketball” is a cool idea, I never thought it would pass the test of scrutiny of real sports professionals.  When talking about basketball, (and most other subjects, for that matter), I have always felt like a dilettante playing around in someone else’s field.

Anyway, now I get to fly to MIT in March and give a 30-minute talk at the conference, wherein I’ll try to convince sports industry professionals that the idea has some value.  I’m really not completely convinced that it does, but I’m excited because, at least for 30 minutes, a roomful of intelligent people will consider the idea seriously and help me pick out any flaws or make important generalizations.

Of course, to that end, the readers of this blog have been tremendously helpful already.  The idea has undergone some significant refinement thanks to the discussions I’ve had with you.  So thank you.

At the risk of compromising my anonymity (which was never very secure or very valuable to begin with), I will point you toward this link, which has the entirety of my paper on “the price of anarchy in basketball”: http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1801 http://www.bepress.com/jqas/vol6/iss1/3.  Feel free to read it over and point out the parts that bother you.  Any comments or criticisms will be greatly appreciated.