FightMetric Announces Fellowship Cohort, Statistical Analysis for MMA
by Leland Roling on Oct 19, 2009 10:55 AM EDT
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PrintThis has been in the works for awhile, but I thought I'd, at least, inform everyone of the effort by FightMetric, myself, and a few other people with PhD's that make my B.S. look bad. Although in my defense, I was three classes away from having a B.S. in Mathematics. In any case, we're hoping to bring some relevance to the FightMetric data in terms of new statistics to help us better analyze the sport. Sabermetrics for MMA, if you will. The Fellowship team consists of:
2009-10 FightMetric Fellowship Cohort
John Henry
John is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics whose research has
focused on extreme value theory with applications in environmental/ecological and actuarial science. Dr. Henry received his PhD in statistics from Oregon State University in 2008. John is also an MMA fighter, winning the light heavyweight title in his last amateur fight with Brass Knuckles Cage Fighting Promotions. He has recently turned pro, and is currently training with the HIT Squad in Granite City, IL.
Reed Kuhn
Reed first got hooked on MMA as a teenager in the early 90’s, but rediscovered the sport in grad school while working on statistical analysis of the NFL. Since 2005, he has not missed a single televised MMA event, has travelled as far as Germany to attend live UFC events, and credits The Ultimate Fighter show for making his wife a fan (and thus, partially accepting of his MMA habit). He is a strategy management consultant by trade, with a BS in Physics, a Master’s in Systems Engineering, and an MBA from Duke University specializing in Operations and Decision Sciences.
Leland Roling
Leland is currently a Staff Writer for BloodyElbow.com, one of the most popular blogs on the Internet covering the sport of mixed martial arts. He is also a full-time professional web developer who builds data-driven websites that make the Internet work for you. In his free time, he is President of the Melvin Manhoef Fan Club, watches way too much MMA, and passionately awaits the Chicago Cubs World Series title, which, quite frankly, will probably kill him.
Brian Reich
Brian received a PhD in biostatistics from the University of Minnesota in 2005, and is currently an assistant professor of statistics at North Carolina State University. His research interests include modelling spatial and spatio-temporal data, environmental applications, Bayesian methods, and nonparametric statistics. For more information, please view his website.
Unbelievably, I actually understand nearly all of the mathematical processes outlined by most of the fellowship participants. It should be a fun endeavour, and hopefully some great statistical analysis will come out of it that we can bring to the masses.
The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Bloody Elbow readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bloody Elbow editors or staff.
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congrats Leland!
this is money. Well done.
Fight Metric is the best in the game for statistical analysis of MMA.
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Leland, what is your B.S. in? That matter more then you think. Like in my case, I have a B.S. in Comp Sci and that is greater then my little brothers psychology degree and will remain greater when he gets his PhD. Although, my B.S. is not in the ballpark of of this team and I have been hit in the head enough to take it down a few more notches.
My B.S. is in Computer Science, and my A.S. was in Computer Engineering. I took nearly 3x more Mathematics courses than the normal Comp Sci student though. I was three courses away from obtaining a B.S. in Mathematics, if I wanted to switch, but I liked Comp Sci much more.
The problem here is that I don’t remember much of what I was taught. A lot of refreshing, but I can manipulate data with SQL and all that shit for days. Easy as pie.
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"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
by Leland Roling on Oct 19, 2009 1:00 PM EDT up reply actions
I do most of the SQL work at my company (and clean up all the other SQL that is written other people). I took the min of math classes, to fill my slate of classes with advanced comp sci classes. I regretted this move when I had to take op systems, ASM, compiler design, network arch, Comp Arch, and most of all Multi Agent Systems. Got to Calc 2 and some stat classes, but not enough for high level thought on knowledge representation. Being a SQL monkey is easy money and requires a minimum of thought. I pretty much haven’t touched c# in a year and thats what most of our apps are in.
Leland R. as described in pre-fight introductions
Joe Rogan: His strength is coding, but if a math-heavy opponent wants to take it to the chalkboard, he’s more than comfortable there as well. Primarily we can look to him to close the distance and lock things up in an SQL database to impose his will, though.
Mike Goldberg: Joe, some would say underrated are the math skills of Leland. It says here he’s also the head of the Manhoef fan club.
by LBo on Oct 19, 2009 8:32 PM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
we have the same course.. *high five*
I just graduated from Computer Engineering.. but B.S. not A.S.
by Anton Tabuena on Oct 20, 2009 9:42 AM EDT up reply actions
Yeah, it varies. My Associates in Computer Engineering was harder than my B.S. courses. I had to take every math class up to Differential Equations, four Physics courses, four Chemistry courses, a few microbiology courses, and my degree’s programming courses plus engineering courses for my A.S. and they were all taught by University of Illinois retired teachers making an extra buck. I got a top five degree for 1/3 the cost.
Follow me on Twitter @lelandroling
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
by Leland Roling on Oct 20, 2009 9:45 AM EDT up reply actions
When I was in the Comp Sci program, we always looked at Comp Engineering students as sadistic. You basically need to know everything.
I really didn’t get it… I didn’t understand why I had to know all that shit. I love math in actuality, and it was pretty easy to pull down A’s in those courses, but I loathe Chemistry. I do well in it, but I find it ridiculously hard to deal with.
Follow me on Twitter @lelandroling
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
by Leland Roling on Oct 20, 2009 10:15 AM EDT up reply actions
It doesn’t make sense for a DB guy to know Comp Engineering, but if you were designing chip and expoiting the physical limits of matter to make a smaller chip then you might get it. The one class I had that was about 50% comp engineers was Comp Architecture where we designed CPUs in VHDL. Very cool class, but it was only where code obfuscated the physical.
Well, it was a CC, not a University, so the closest they had to Comp Sci was Comp Engineering. Only about 1/5th of the classes involved programming. I didn’t get heavy into SQL and DBs until a transferred out after my A.S.
Follow me on Twitter @lelandroling
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
by Leland Roling on Oct 20, 2009 10:37 AM EDT up reply actions
A prof once told me that 90% of the computer jobs were heavy DB jobs. Which made total sense to me so I focused on DB a lot. I actually picked my college by looking at a very old 80’s college directory and found a school that had computer majors even then, so I knew the program was not new in any way and that they had an idea of what they were doing. It was a very under rated school, but the local reputation is very good and well known. Also it was one of the cheapest and closest schools so it made the choice for me.
Well, I do a lot of DB heavy stuff. But Web Programming has boomed. I do a lot of complicated JQuery, Javascript, .NET, Java, Dynamics, Microsoft world stuff all day long while fitting in some idea writing and MMA news stuff.
Follow me on Twitter @lelandroling
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
by Leland Roling on Oct 20, 2009 11:23 AM EDT up reply actions
Hey now that you are associated with those people can you do something about the fact that they have reports on only about 100 fights after doing this for years. I mean get some Japanese fights in there, or at least some Strikeforce or more WEC
I believe they did DREAM actually, but I haven’t checked.
Follow me on Twitter @lelandroling
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
by Leland Roling on Oct 19, 2009 1:40 PM EDT up reply actions
They announced that they “completed statistical breakdown of ever fight in DREAM history”, but when you go to see their reports all they have are a few PRIDE fights, 1 WEC fight, and about 90 UFC fights. I still haven’t figured out what they meant by that announcement bc they haven’t released any data
Quality stuff.
I’m excited to see how this turns out.
"I see him beating Anderson Silva. I see him picking him apart. Him at a 131 years old...(trails off)." - Tito Ortiz on Vitor Belfort at Affliction:DOR
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