wrestlestats.com

[tradetools]

I pulled this discussion about wrestlestats.com out of the depths of the #4 OK State Vs. #5 Missouri thread... and wanted to follow-up on it separately.

It is directed to andegre to ask what the plans are for the wrestlestats website? Is it intended to be a revenue generating site eventually? My interest is driven by the fact that your (or whomever's) basic idea of allowing the user to adjust lineups and instantly do comparisons between teams is truly innovative and very helpful.

You have always been open to requests for improving the site. While I don't have any specific requests for tweaking the site, I do have a few long-term suggestions for how to more thoroughly mine the database you already maintain to produce more valuable content for viewers (or hopefully future subscribers).

1. score all duals upfront using your rankings and create predicted team outcomes. Viewers will undoubtedly want to change the lineup and you can automate the predictions to reflect lineup changes. I have read some of your discussion of using algorithms to do this so am assuming you have a comfort level with building probabilistic models. I would think it is time for someone to begin leveraging data analytics to a greater degree in wrestling (as it is in most other sports) and building predictive models for upfront scoring of dual meets. I think this would be of tremendous interest to wrestling fans if they could see a predicted outcome for each dual and make their own adjustments to the lineup.

2. produce a wrestler on wrestler comparison. Much of the debate on the boards centers around hypothetical head to head matches. I would think the historical database you maintain would produce enough data for building models to predict outcomes. As always, there is a margin of error, but a model based prediction using a well defined statistical model would be very interesting. You could begin by building models that explain the influence of a number of factors on the likellihood of winning a match (home vs away, years wrestling, past success, current year record, high school rankings, team success, normal weight class, starter vs reserve, coming off injury, etc...) and then match this with head to head and common opponent data. There is a lot of discussion about how useful these metrics are (or are not), but I have never seen any serious analysis of the data to reach a conclusion. I would think this would be of value to coaches as well.

I could offer other suggestions but wanted to start the conversation and see if it is of any value to andegre or just suggesting more work for him.... : ))



andegre

 

[andegre]

That was actually one of my ideas when I originally started writing the dual comparison stuff (probability of winning, etc). But once I got going, the work ended up getting steered more toward just getting everything to work, and look right. Also, once I did start looking into doing that, I had no idea how to generate an algorithm to be able to do that. Weird thing is, on my ACT I did score a 33 in the math area, but when I was in college, my statistics class was considerably harder than my calculus classes, if that makes sense.

I would LOVE if any statisticians out there could help me out with this, because like you said, I think it would add considerable value to the dual (and wrestler) comparison screens.

Regarding the revenue/? part, basically I just want to be able to stay afloat (revenue from ads + donations offset my hosting costs). Right now (at least prior to two weeks ago), they were doing that. I just switched over to a different host provider that is a little more expensive, but the "extras" are well worth it in my eyes (logging, analytics, reporting, error reporting, etc). In my opinion, I still have far too many errors that happen on the site, and having that data is the ONLY way I'll be able to track down where the issues are.

Also regarding the $, it would be impossible to re-coup (sp?) the "cost" of my time that I've put into this site, but I'm not worried about that. If the site ends up being "profitable" in the long run, cool, but that's not why I'm doing this.

As far as my future plans, there really isn't much else that I want to do with the site. I have a couple other ideas of stuff I want to add in, but they aren't really game-changers. I have some game-changing ideas that I've come up with in the last 6 months, but those tasks would require me to work on this as a full-time job. So unless people start donating tens-of-thousands of dollars, or some KickStarter project gets setup, those aren't going to happen.

Other changes in the future for the site:
1) All NCAA brackets from past NCAA championships
2) Improve the architecture, security, and [implement] an approval process to allow for fans to enter data (match results, rosters, regular maintenance changes) directly into the site, instead of waiting for me (and Obrats) to do this work.
3) Have YouTube links to matches !!!!!!!!!!! (Are there any videos on YouTube of actual matches, or do people have to go to Flo, TrackCast, B1G network, etc to get those?)

Like you said, I'm ALWAYS open to new ideas about improvements and enhancements. I want this site to be the #1 source of all college wrestling information.

 

[chasepollard]

There is a guy on our paid forum that does an outstanding job with statistical analysis and puts together a very informative piece every Football Pre-Season.

If you could, e-mail me at chase@arbuckletitle.com

 

[tradetools]

Thanks for the note and comments, Andegre. I think you have done a great job and I use the site regularly. Also glad you have adequate revenue coming in to keep you involved.

The only other suggested feature I would have is scoring tournaments upfront. Take the bracket, and based on predicted head to head matchups, you could produce a predicted tournament outcome by team. Users could also alter the choices and make their own outcomes. Would be a really useful tool. I think tremendous discussion would center around it for conference tournaments and the NCAA tournaments. Would be great for the range of other tournaments as well.

I am guessing that you are a professional database developer or programmer given the capabilities of the site and the javascript code? I believe you mentioned that you have shifted to Azure for hosting. Is it running on Windows or Linux?

I would be happy to lend some assistance with methods for constructing statistical models. That is my background. I do quite a bit of web and database development as well. If you have a rich enough historical database, I suspect there is a lot to be discovered about wrestling match outcomes and wrestler rankings.

I am in the OKC area if you want to have an exploratory cup of coffee sometime...

 

[andegre]

Thanks for the note and comments, Andegre. I think you have done a great job and I use the site regularly. Also glad you have adequate revenue coming in to keep you involved.

The only other suggested feature I would have is scoring tournaments upfront. Take the bracket, and based on predicted head to head matchups, you could produce a predicted tournament outcome by team. Users could also alter the choices and make their own outcomes. Would be a really useful tool. I think tremendous discussion would center around it for conference tournaments and the NCAA tournaments. Would be great for the range of other tournaments as well.

I am guessing that you are a professional database developer or programmer given the capabilities of the site and the javascript code? I believe you mentioned that you have shifted to Azure for hosting. Is it running on Windows or Linux?

I would be happy to lend some assistance with methods for constructing statistical models. That is my background. I do quite a bit of web and database development as well. If you have a rich enough historical database, I suspect there is a lot to be discovered about wrestling match outcomes and wrestler rankings.

I am in the OKC area if you want to have an exploratory cup of coffee sometime...

Hey TradeTools, thanks for the note and kind words!

One of my ideas BEFORE I developed this site was for tournament brackets online. Being able to generate those brackets from a list of entrants turned out to be an extremely daunting task, and I don't have enough math/algorithm background to think of how to do that...would definitely love to do that though.

Regarding the statistics and stuff, that again is out of my league. That is the MAJOR component missing from the dual and invididual comparisons that I would LOVE to incorporate into the site. I do have a decent amount of data in my database, it's just a matter of putting it altogether for an algorithm. If you or someone could come up with the algorithm, I could easily translate that to code to generate win/loss probablities.