Perhaps the easiest way to begin the process of predicting when a prospect will be drafted is to look back at the recent history of draft picks and see how the current year's players compare to those in the past from a physical standpoint.  All the draft history data was found at Pro-Football-Reference and all the prospect measurements was found at Mock Draftable.

Mock Draftable has a very ingenious way of comparing prospects to others of the same physical attributes by creating a "star" graph with each category (height, weight, 40 time, etc.) on an axis by percentile within each position.  I've had similar ideas to creating this type of star graph going back to 2009 so I'm glad to see that someone else thinks similarly and has actually created it.  The general thesis is that this type of graph provides a general, well-balanced overview evaluation of many different numbers in a single graph.  A perfect prospect measured on a star graph with 8 different attributes would look like an octagon, since hitting 100% of each axis would create the uniform shape.

So instead of starting by comparing prospect's physical measurements to those of recent past drafts, I'll let Mock Draftable do the hard work there and instead concentrate on something else in the beginning.

What I want to look at in the beginning is what specific measurements in each category (again height, weight, etc.) are better indicators of NFL performance, for instance do 6'3" tall wide receiver fare better typically than 6'2" tall receiver, etc.  I saved myself from doing the hard work on grading how well players have done since entering the NFL by relying on the invaluable website Pro Football Focus (PFF) for that information.  PFF has a team of game analysts that watch every players on every play for every team and who grade the player's performance as unbiased as possible.  So to graph the players worth thus far, I collected each of their career values (how good they have been) and divided it by the number of years they have been in the NFL to get a "Career Value per Year" score.

Let's start with a simple graph, showing the prospect's age graphed against the Car Val per Year (all data analysis was done in SAS' JMP software):

As you can see from the smooth line fit, drafting younger players is typically better than drafting older players.  There could be many theories as to why but I'll try to stay clear of causal theories in this statistical analysis.

Next I broke it down by positions.  This allows you to truly compare apples to apples, since we're comparing one WR to another WR.  This is the full breakdown for the WR position with some insights from the limited data set going back to the 2008 draft:

This shows the means (averages) of each year old when drafted, their height in inches and weight in pounds.  There's a clear indicator that drafting younger WRs is better than drafting older ones but height and weight is less clear.  There's no specific sweet spot for height and weight, but to answer my earlier question, yes typically 6'3" tall WR are better players than 6'2" players in the NFL.  For a much, much deeper dive into WR measurables, the fantasy football site Rotoviz has done some great work thus far.

For a project in a Data Mining class that I'm currently enrolled in I have to use data to predict an unknown value or object, given other data that may or may not relate to the subject in question.  Since I'm going to be spending a lot of time on this for the next week, and because I believe the more you're interested in something the better you'll do, I wanted to pick a subject that I was passionate about.  Given the timing, I want to try to do the impossible and predict the 1st round of the NFL Draft as the picks are made live on May 8.

I've always been fascinated by the NFL Draft.  The workings behind the scenes of player evaluation and selection are as interesting to me as the games themselves.  The draft and all that goes into it is something that people devote their lives to; it is even now shown live over 3 consecutive days on one of the most watched channels on TV in the primetime month of May.  Yet with all the attention paid to it by smart people all over the country, even the best pundits can only get 12 of the 32 selections correct.  I thought I'd give it creating a mock draft in real time as the picks are made a shot by simply doing a data analysis project on it.

My plan is to use predictors such as an aggregated mock draft collection of various pundits across the country, player physical attributes, college statistics and confirmed NFL team visits to try and assign a probability to the top guess for each team.

Wish me luck.

Batman is one of my favorite superheroes and arguably one of the most popular ones as well.  The story has been told many times from different angles throughout the years but I most enjoy Christopher Nolan's renditions in the most recent trilogy.  Both critical acclaim and box office success also mean that mostly everyone else agrees as well.

The reason most people are drawn to the story of Batman is that he is the most alike to anyone of us; except for the fact that he was born into a family of billionaires.  He doesn't have any superpowers that he got from being bitten by a radioactive spider or because he was born on an alien planet, he just goes out there night after night beating up bad guys with his fists.  Oh and I guess also because he uses his billions of dollars to create fancy weaponry that the U.S. Army doesn't even have but that is besides the point I'm trying to make.  As Nolan notes several times in the most recent films, Batman is an idea whereas Bruce Wayne is just a man.

Batman to me is a symbol of what Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman refers to in his seminal masterpiece on behavioral psychology, Thinking Fast and Slow, as " the glue that holds societies together".  It happens in the chapter entitled "Bad Events", where Kahneman is describing the concept of altruistic punishment.  He says that experiments looking at MRI results of people that punish others for what they did to someone else actually resulted in increased activities in the "pleasure centers" of the brain.  He notes, "It appears that maintaining the social order and the rules of fairness in this [way] is its own reward."  

It would seem that Batman is fighting crime anonymously all those years because it actually gives him pleasure, that it makes him feel good to right the wronged.  He enjoys punishing criminals that unfairly get to walk because of an unjust legal system.  To him, the personal punishment he takes is worth it because of the social good that could come out of it.

When you start to think of it that way, Nolan's version of the Batman series becomes even more interesting and, therefore, even better than you already thought it was.

// I have to add that when I went to Amazon to get the link for Thinking Fast and Slow, I noticed that the Kindle version was only $2.99.  Three dollars!  Even though I already have it in hardcover, I can't pass up the opportunity to be able to take it wherever I go for only three bucks

Soooo I don't post often at all, I've posted two quick notes with one of them being about what I will post.  But every month I pay $5 to keep my PostHaven account active after contemplating discontinuing it.  I invariably come to the conclusion that I will start posting more but each month goes by and I don't.

So why do I keep paying $5 a month?

The truth is I'm a private person, an introvert who likes to keep most of my thoughts to myself, but I struggle with being more public.  On Facebook I only post funny pictures or things I think my friends will find interesting but not nearly as much as others.  On Twitter I predominately retweet sentiments I agree with or find funny because it's easier and most of the time somebody else can put into words what I'm thinking better than I can.  The only thing I posted semi-regularly on is a music blog I was using with some friends but that was mainly an easy way to share new music with them.

So why do I keep paying $5 a month when I struggle with posting at all?

Because I want to in the future.  I want to share my thoughts with whoever is willing to read them with the hope that they lead to different thoughts on the other end or are just found interesting.  I keep paying each month because I feel it'll force me to post more often than if the site were free.  That might not make sense to most but the small extrinsic motivation keeps me hopeful that I will start to change and open up.  So that's what I'll continue to do, hoping that one day I'll change my ways and become part of the person I wish to be.

And that starts by doing this

I continue to love and be impressed by what comes out of Google nowadays.  Google Streetview Treks is only the latest new idea.  Being able to look at streetviews of actual hikes and places where the car can't go will only help to open the world's eyes to what is out there.

It's another in the long line of ideas that just makes sense when you first hear about it, like it should have been done a long time ago.  But that's how you know it's a great idea -- because everyone gets it.  

http://www.google.com/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetview/treks/

They're also offering to lend the equipment to people and organizations that can get to those remote locations

http://www.google.com/maps/about/partners/streetview/trekker/