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David Sumpter
@Soccermatics
Professor of Applied Maths and Author. Co-founder and data scientist at Twelve football.
Uppsala, Sweden
Joined January 2015
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    Do you want to learn football analytics? ๐Ÿค” You have come to the right place! โœ… My course 'Soccermatics: mathematical modelling of football' is available now. AND IT IS FREE.๐Ÿค— soccermatics.readthedocs.io
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    Look in the bottom right corner of this graph. ๐Ÿ‘€ The two teams with the lowest xG/shot against and highest xG/shot for are owned by professional gamblers who made their fortunes using expected goals. Football analytics really does work...
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    Expected Threat (xT) is one of the most important (but least well-understood) statistics in football. โšฝ๏ธโšฝ๏ธ It was used by Liverpool (they call it Goals Added) to do some of their best scouting. ๐Ÿ“ˆ And now, YOU can learn all about it...๐Ÿงต
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    Arsenal are very good this season. Here is a thread with the numbers which explain why... (Yes, of course being 1st in the league is also an important number๐Ÿ˜‰) Before today they have outperformed their opponents on xG in every match.
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    A thread on Liverpool using numbers. Six games is great for using expected goals and expected threat to find out what is going on. First of all they have 'won' all six on xG.
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    Hammarby are doing something of a first in football analytics. The club has set up metrics for their style of play, which will be communicated throughout the season with fans, the board and players alike.
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    The complete guide course to football analytics is now available for free. Covering everything from getting started in python, through expected goals, simulating matches and evaluating players, to tracking data and expected possession value. Enjoy! uppsala.instructure.com/courses/28112
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    The Future of Life Institute is a problem. Being in same age-group (lower end maybe๐Ÿ˜ƒ)/cultural background (8-bit programming๐Ÿ“ผโŒจ๏ธ) as these men, makes me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed for them. Here they (Musk, Hassabis, Tegmark, Bostrom etc.) are in 2017.
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    How should we do mathematical modelling? With more and more strange ideas flying about AI (It can read minds! it is truly intelligent and might take over the world!) we need to refocus. This is what I do in this paper with Linnea Gyllingberg and @Abebab.
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    Almost twenty thousand fans welcome @Hammarbyfotboll womenโ€™s team on to the pitch.
    00:00
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    Mathematical modelling in football course starts 31st of August. Free to all EU citizens. Full syllabus and details how to register here: uppsala.instructure.com/courses/28112/โ€ฆ
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    You might not be interested in football or maths, but you HAVE to watch @maramperninety here. A 20-year-old Muslim woman, she is one of the absolute best at combining these two (otherwise) male-dominated areas. She talks so eloquently about her journey.
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    If we are going to be able to scout players using data, we have to use an understanding of the game. I explain how to do this using Professor Paco Seirulยทloโ€™s zonal method. barcainnovationhub.com/the-three-zoneโ€ฆ
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    It never ceases to amaze me how close goal distributions are to Poisson. This is distribution of number of goals in a match since 2005 in the Premier League. Bars are histogram. Line is Poisson distribution. 0-0 draws are the only outlier.