The University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI) is adding a new elective in the expanding field of sports analytics to its online Master of Applied Data Science (MADS) program in spring 2022. 

In SIADS 687: Introduction to Sports Analytics, students will study how machine learning techniques are applied in the domain of sports analytics, including in team competition, individual competition and emerging wearable sensor technologies. Assistant professor Christopher Brooks and lecturer Anthony Giove, a 2021 MADS graduate, will teach the course with Thomas Finholt, the dean of UMSI.  

“Sports analytics is the use of statistics and data generated in the course of competition and sometimes practice to produce insights that have competitive advantage,” says Finholt, an early and active proponent of the science. “Probably the canonical example is Michael Lewis’s book ‘Moneyball’ and the subsequent movie starring Brad Pitt.” 

A relatively recent area of study, sports analytics gained traction in the 1970’s as baseball writer, historian and statistician Bill James began compiling and circulating mimeographed insights from his analyses of contemporary baseball stats among like-minded individuals, including Finholt. 

Sports analytics, once an avocation, became the basis for the operational decisions of major league teams over the last 25 years, starting with the MLB, then the NBA, NFL and NHL, not to mention the large worldwide soccer and cricket analytics communities. 

The MADS program’s new sports analytics elective also rose from the grassroots. It got its start in Brooks’s weekly extracurricular Twitch stream, “kind of like a bonus office hour,” where he worked through coding questions with new MADS students. 

Fast forward six months and Brooks and students were coding together in a shared notebook environment, solving compelling data science problems around a shared interest: sports analytics. That momentum led to the formation of a sports analytics Slack channel for the MADS community and the development of the new elective. “The course was based on interest in the student body,” Brooks says. “Student interest, and their capacity, capability and desire to get involved, are quite powerful.” 

The MADS elective is preceded by a Sports Performance Analytics Specialization on Coursera co-produced by UMSI and the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology. The specialization was born of a project matching students and faculty from the Schools of Information, Kinesiology, Engineering and Public Health with Michigan teams to analyze student athletes’ data captured by Catapult wearable sensor technology. 

While the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is packed with first-class content, Brooks says there’s no comparison between the self-driven learning experience and the breadth, depth and support MADS students retain. 

“If you want to ask questions in the MOOC, you’re really limited in regards to whom you can pose those questions,” Brooks says. “Beyond that, we only have a few technical courses in the MOOC and none of the deep social science aspects of data science we cover in the MADS curriculum, which are important things like communication and ethics that are increasingly sought after in the job market.” 

What skills will MADS students be building in this elective? A lot of what they’ll be doing is using data to generate predictions about outcomes. 

“One kind of outcome of interest could be, for example, selection into the Hall of Fame or who will receive the Most Valuable Player designation,” says Finholt. “Then there’s predicting precursors of success: for example, using machine learning techniques to analyze data that would be very complex or difficult for humans to analyze in real time, such as the probability of different defensive responses to a play having a successful outcome.” 

Finholt calls the sports analytics elective a great addition to the MADS curriculum because it’s one more space where students can see career potential through application of the techniques, strategies and approaches they’re learning in the degree. And sports analytics is increasingly drawing women to leadership roles in sports, like the Miami Marlins’ Kim Ng, the first woman and first Asian American to be named general manager of a Major League Baseball franchise.

“There are lucrative career paths coming out of sports analytics,” Finholt says. “In addition to managing sports teams and informing sports journalism, there’s a new sphere around fueling sports wagering that I think will be very important.” 

Engaging sports analytics is also a way for MADS students to embrace a vital part of the U-M experience. “It’s a way of bringing home to our remote students a sense of identity,” Finholt says. “We can all follow what’s going on with the football team or the women’s basketball team. Michigan Athletics is using analytics every day to help their teams succeed.” 

And it’s not just about wins and losses. “Sports analytics is also about wellbeing and injury prevention and training in preparation to do what is best,” Finholt says. “I think the elective is going to be an important, really excellent addition to the MADS curriculum.”

Learn more about UMSI's Master of Applied Data Science program and how to apply.