A Sports Analytics Approach to the Social Sciences

4 credits

Sports analytics is a fast-growing field. It uses data and statistical methods to measure performance in competitive sports. The approach’s popularity has generated a wealth of data that can be used to shed light on social science questions in interesting ways. We will focus on topics such as violent behavior, discrimination, cultural/ethnic diversity, corruption, and cognitive biases using examples from baseball, basketball, figure skating, football, hockey, soccer, and sumo wrestling. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.