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Funny enough, the automation/optimization/scripting/algorithm aspects of DFS are a big part of what makes it interesting to me. I have domain knowledge about sp
by swanson 11y ago
Funny enough, the automation/optimization/scripting/algorithm aspects of DFS are a big part of what makes it interesting to me. I have domain knowledge about sports, so DFS is a better testbed for me to learn and explore these areas than, say, automated stock trading.
It's a great place to practice linear algebra, machine learning, forecasting and projection models, web scrapping, data cleaning/normalization, and API wrangling. And all without needing a brokerage account, minimum account balance, or transaction fees!
- acconrad 11y agoI never thought about it this way, and while you don't have to worry about brokerage accounts and minimum fees, you have to pay for accurate stats. Using a place like ProFootballFocus or StatsInc is going to cost you a pretty penny if you want to scrape an API with up-to-the-second accurate information.
- bcruddy 11y agoYou don't need "up to the minute" information though. Data can be days old and still be viable as long as you're using twitter's streaming API to get injury updates from one of each 32 teams beat writers as they occur. If I'm setting an NFL lineup on Friday I know the stats haven't had an opportunity to change in 6 days.
- brianwawok 11y agoMonday night football! So not quite 6.
- micwawa 11y agoInjury reports are serious wrinkles. Often time players will be scratched within a few hours before the game. If you are optimizing, you need to account for this because it sends the backups value much higher than his salary. For example, last night Rajon Rondo was scratched. His backup Darren Collison, was in over 80% of the lineups in a FanDuel 50/50 tournament. I didn't have him, and I lost $2.
- acconrad 11y agoIt also depends on the data you want. Most data sources don't have all of the things you could want to use in order to create meaningful stats.
- swanson 11y agoESPN Boxscores -- or FanDuel/DraftKings themselves -- have this data available. Or there are projects like https://github.com/BurntSushi/nfldb https://github.com/BurntSushi/nfldb
- micwawa 11y agoI got into this for the very same reason. If you are in it for these academic aspect, would you be interested in teaming up?
- zeeshanm 11y agodope. let's connect.
- fweespeech 11y agoI find Quantopian is a pretty good testbed given you can get their stock data for free in their contests. No need for a brokerage account, minimum, or any sort of fee. https://www.quantopian.com/open https://www.quantopian.com/open
- bomatson 11y agoYou could also apply these same skills within NLP (Natural Language Processing), replacing "Sports" with "Linguistics" and provide a lot more positive net impact on the world
- true_religion 11y agoTrue, perhaps... but whenever I'm learning something for fun, I apply it to something without any applicable human benefit. I dabbled in machine learning algorithms... but just so I could play board games with my computer. As a student, I think it matters less what you're applying your emerging knowledge to.