Finishing Rates by Round and a Call for Volunteers
by Mike Fagan on Mar 19, 2009 12:28 PM EDT
in MMA News
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PrintIn my piece defending the five round title fight, I argued against Rami Genaur's posit that additional rounds would lead to more decisions. Rami realized his error in logic prior to reading my post, but he did bring up an idea that intuitively felt right. From his e-mail to Fightlinker:
Unless every MMA fighter drastically improves his cardio, this can’t work. Guys lose their finishing ability as the fight goes on.
I decided to run some numbers (what else is new?) to test the theory. In the following graph, we have the finishing rates by round. I must explain a couple things. One, I included UFC title fights, but disregarded anything past round four (mostly for sample size issues). For Pride fights, I split up the first round into two five minutes stanzas. I cut out the third round because, while I can isolate the Bushido fights, going through the database to pick out tournament fights was not my idea of fun.
Outside of the second period, it's interesting that the two lines are so similar. I believe it's fair to say that Rami's hypothesis is true, and may even be hardened if you believe the drop in Pride's second period is due to the ten minute first round.
CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS
I have a couple projects I want to work on, but the data gathering would be too much for one man. I want to look at the effect of referees and judges on fights. I'm looking for people with access to full UFC cards (whether it's UFC DVDs or "other" means makes no difference to me). You would be responsible for just two things. One, noting the referee for each fight. Two, for any fight that went to a decision, marking each judge and their score. I'm looking for this data for each fight since the implementation of the Unified Rules. Shoot me an e-mail if you're interested.
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Rome...
Lemme ask you this…
Would it be beneficial for you to have some sort of database of every single fight in the Fight Finder for data purposes? If so, let me know. I wrote a small ASP.net program awhile back that pulls from the Fight Finder all the data. I simply used it for statistical analysis, and it surely could help you.
Editor-in-chief of MMA-Analyst.com
I actually put together my own database by hand, but would love love love something to automate the process. Definitely hook a brother up.
http://www.sackmikegoldberg.com
By Hand?
Wow, didn’t that take you forever?
I’ll have to re-write the program, or I may still have it somewhere. It takes roughly an hour to compile the Finder’s records, but it’ll obtain every single fight in the database. It’ll definitely give you a complete dataset.
Do you have any SQL experience at all? I’ll have to see if I can import the data into Access or something, but from there, you could make any number of queries to get a whole lot of incredible statistical data.
Editor-in-chief of MMA-Analyst.com
by Leland Roling on Mar 19, 2009 12:40 PM EDT up reply actions
SQL. God, I never thought I'd have to see that program's name bandied about here.
by Luke Thomas on Mar 19, 2009 12:43 PM EDT up reply actions
LOL
Well, for Fagan’s purposes, it’d be fairly simple SQL. A bunch of SELECT statements where finish = submission or something like that. Although, something like Access could just build the statements for him as he clicks on columns.
Nonetheless, the database and subsequent data searching could help out some of his future analysis. If I can find the program I wrote, I’ll chug out a sample DB and mail it off. Otherwise, I think it only took me a couple hours to write.
Editor-in-chief of MMA-Analyst.com
by Leland Roling on Mar 19, 2009 12:48 PM EDT up reply actions
I have minimal experience with SQL. Some way to transfer to Access would be nice, but I don’t mind trying to brush up on my SQL either.
If I want to update the database will I have to re-download the entire FF or just snatch new data?
http://www.sackmikegoldberg.com
The way it was working before was that I was entering a number range. So, for new fighters in new promotions, they would be at the end of the number range. Fight Finder ranges their pages of fighters with ID numbers, so all the newer guys would be at the end.
You’d likely have to run the program again to get the most up-to-date information, but I’ll see if I can do something.
Editor-in-chief of MMA-Analyst.com
by Leland Roling on Mar 19, 2009 1:28 PM EDT up reply actions
Did you use sql server? I would like to have that DB. I have always wanted to write that scrapper, but I hate writing scrappers. I was sort of waiting for someone to expose a web service, but I guess thats a pipe dream.
Hmm...
Without getting too technical on the MMA crowd, exposing a web service wouldn’t be a bad idea. I’ve always thought the same thing, why doesn’t Sherdog or the UG expose a web service to query the damn thing to spread the wealth.
The scraper isn’t exactly efficient, but it works, and grabs literally every piece of data on each fighter. I was using the statistical data to create a very complete ELO ranking system sometime back, but I deleted the whole project when my HD failed on my laptop. Re-creating the scraper wouldn’t take me long, I just need to find some time.
Luckily, I’m not dealing with PL/SQL.
Editor-in-chief of MMA-Analyst.com
by Leland Roling on Mar 19, 2009 3:29 PM EDT up reply actions
Each fighter is given an ID, You can query each page via the Querystring. I just use a massive loop, grab the HTML source, parse it, and poof… a database.
Editor-in-chief of MMA-Analyst.com
by Leland Roling on Mar 19, 2009 3:50 PM EDT up reply actions
A fine way to run an operation, but may I suggest doing it by event. Pull all the events within a date range, them pull fighters in each even and update each fighter in the set. It will make updating less painful. Instead of going to every fighter to update, you can go to all the fighters in the events since the last update was ran with a little overlap to ensure you have updated stats on events where the results are not inputed right away. You would still have to run the global full update from time to time, but not as often.
True enough. The problem is that much of the the fight finder is updated with past fights as well, so yes, from time to time, I would need to update.
Editor-in-chief of MMA-Analyst.com
by Leland Roling on Mar 19, 2009 4:06 PM EDT up reply actions
What a pain in the ass. Not to mention a scrapper breaking because they change formating a little or an ad they are running screws it up. If you need any assistance, I have a background that could be used to help you. I just lack free time. I do DB design and I am pretty good at it at this point do if you need a schema or table advise just let me know. I recommend using sql express, its free and exporting it to access for Mr. Fagan would be pretty easy, but I am sure you have something set up already.
Actually, that’s what I’m using is SQL Express, although I have a variety of options. I’m a senior web developer, which also includes heavy DBA work. I’ve been using ORACLE lately, but SQL Server/MySQL has worked well on this little project.
I’ve actually been able to combat the ads. I just run a simple check. If the HTML I pull has a specific string, I know the page in an ad, and I re-access it. Continues to re-access it until I get the actual page. Works fairly well.
Editor-in-chief of MMA-Analyst.com
by Leland Roling on Mar 19, 2009 4:51 PM EDT up reply actions
I have most fights pre-UFC 73 on DVD that includes a lot of off the wall fights like WFA, Bodog, Icon, ROTR. I can do this for you, but I don’t have a lot of time
This probably has been asked in a prior post, but...
I’ve got a question about your methodology. Are you looking at what percentage of total fights end in each round or percentage of fights that make it to a given round that are finished in that round?
Basically if you look at finishes in later rounds as a percentage of total fights you will get a skewed outcome, because fewer fights make it into each later round giving fewer opportunities to finish.
by thekiltedwonder on Mar 19, 2009 1:06 PM EDT reply actions
Volunteers
I would be interested in helping to gather the data about judges scores and the referees that are involved in each fight. I’ll be sending you an e-mail shortly.
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