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Fantasy Football Analytics: Statistics, Prediction, and Empiricism Using R

Version 0.0.1

Author

Isaac T. Petersen

Published

November 27, 2024

Abstract

This book is about learning statistics, prediction, and empiricism through the lens of fantasy football. It teaches readers how to use the free software R to perform fantasy football data analysis.

Preface

This is a book in progress—it is incomplete. I will continue to add to and update it as I am able.

How to Contribute

This is an open-access textbook. My goal is to share data analysis strategies for free! Anyone is welcome to contribute to the project. If you would like to contribute, please consider one of the following:

(or use PayPal)

The GitHub repository for the book is located here: https://github.com/isaactpetersen/Fantasy-Football-Analytics-Textbook. If you have data or analysis examples that are you willing to share and include in the book, feel free to contact me.

Open Access

This is an open-access book. This means that it is freely available for anyone to access.

License

Creative Commons License

The online version of this book is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. In short, you can use my work as long as you cite it.

Citation

The APA-style citation for the book is:

Petersen, I. T. (2024). Fantasy football analytics: Statistics, prediction, and empiricism Using R. Version 0.0.1. University of Iowa Libraries. https://github.com/isaactpetersen/Fantasy-Football-Analytics-Textbook. [INSERT DOI LINK]

The BibTeX citation for the book is:

Code
@book{petersenFantasyFootballAnalytics,
  title = {Fantasy football analytics: Statistics, prediction, and empiricism using {R}},
  author = {Petersen, Isaac T.},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {{University of Iowa Libraries}},
  note = {Version 0.0.1},
  doi = {INSERT},
  isbn = {INSERT},
  url = {https://github.com/isaactpetersen/Fantasy-Football-Analytics-Textbook}
}

About the Author

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa. I am a licensed psychologist with expertise in child clinical psychology. Why am I writing about fantasy football and data analysis? Because fantasy football involves the intersection of two things I love: sports and statistics.

Through my training, I have learned the value of statistics for answering important questions that I find interesting. In graduate training, I came to the realization that statistics are relevant not only for psychology and science, but also for domains that I enjoy as hobbies, including sports and fantasy sports. I have played in a longstanding fantasy football league for over 20 years (since my junior year of high school) with old friends from high school. I wanted to apply what I was learning about statistics to help others improve their performance in fantasy football and to help people—including those who might not otherwise be interested—to learn statistics. So I began blogging online about the value of applying statistics to improve decision making in fantasy football. Apparently, many people were interested in learning statistics when they could apply them to a domain that they find interesting like fantasy football. My blog eventually became FantasyFootballAnalytics.net, a website that uses advanced statistics to help people win their fantasy football leagues.

In terms of my R and statistics background, I have published many peer-reviewed publications that employ advanced statistical methods, have published a book on psychological assessment (Petersen, 2024b, 2024c) that includes applied examples in R, and have published the petersenlab R package (Petersen, 2024a) on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). Several sections in this book come from Petersen (2024c). I am also a co-author of the ffanalytics R package (Andersen et al., 2024) that provides free utilities for downloading fantasy football projections and additional fantasy-relevant data, and for calculating projected points given your league settings.

Accessibility

I strive to follow principles of accessibility (archived at https://perma.cc/8XJ9-Q6QJ) to make the book content accessible to people with visual impairments and physical disabilities. If there are additional ways I can make the content more accessible, please let me know.

Acknowledgments

I thank Dr. Benjamin Motz, who provided consultation and many helpful resources based on his fantasy football statistics class. I also thank key members of FantasyFootballAnalytics.net, including Val Pinskiy, Andrew Tungate, Dennis Andersen, and Adam Peterson, who helped develop and provide fantasy football-related resources and who helped sharpen my thinking about the topic. I also thank Professor Patrick Carroll, who taught me the value of statistics for answering important questions.

Feedback

Please consider providing feedback about this textbook, so that I can make it as helpful as possible. You can provide feedback at the following link: https://forms.gle/LsnVKwqmS1VuxWD18

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