Polygence: Backboards & Dashboards

Using analytics to understand sports performance...Whether you're an athlete or a sports fan, learn how data analysis can drive increased performance for sports teams. 

Polygence Pods are 6-week structured courses that place students with 2 to 5 peers in group sessions guided by an expert mentor. Each session is 1 hour and features a mix of lecture and group discussion focused on a specific topic and learning objective, ultimately building towards a fun and fulfilling final project. This Pod will have a one week break in sessions on February 15th. The last session will be on February 29th.

Is the saying “defense wins championships” true or false in basketball? How much does a team's home court advantage really matter? Which teams rely on 3-point shooting most heavily as part of their offensive strategy?

In this pod, you will learn how to acquire a basketball dataset from the web, perform basic data cleaning and analysis in Python, and create compelling visualizations conveying basketball statistics and trends. While the initial lessons will focus on basketball data, the skills learned can be applied to any sport. Toward the end of the course, you will hone in on a specific research question which can be examined and answered using your newly acquired data analysis skills! You will learn how to build a low-code, Python-based interactive web app using a framework called Streamlit.