Foundation · Week 01
Course launch + analytics thinking
Begin with the course roadmap, then learn to turn decisions into focused questions and evaluate evidence through sports analytics and business intelligence applications.
Aug 26–28Two class meetings
Focus
- Course expectations and systems
- Decision → question → evidence → action
- Sports analytics and business intelligence
Prepare
- Read the syllabus
- Open Brightspace and bookmark this website
- Locate your section’s R repository
Practice
- Frame an answerable analytical question
- Identify the unit, outcome, comparison, and context
- Interpret evidence without overstating it
Learning targets
By the end of the week, you should be able to:
- describe data analytics as a process connecting questions, data, analysis, insight, and decisions;
- translate a broad sports or business decision into a focused, answerable question;
- distinguish descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive questions;
- identify the unit of observation, outcome, comparisons, context, and evidence needed to address a question;
- explain how sports analytics and business intelligence support different decisions without eliminating uncertainty; and
- locate the syllabus, weekly roadmap, course materials, Brightspace, and your section’s R repository.
Class plan
| Move | What we will do |
|---|---|
| Orient | Review the course purpose, expectations, grading, policies, learning systems, and semester roadmap. |
| Frame | Use a café-location decision to distinguish forecast accuracy from decision usefulness. |
| Compare | Distinguish descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive questions and the evidence each requires. |
| Apply | Interpret season-ticket, football, and player-performance evidence without overstating what it shows. |
| Monitor | Connect recurring questions, key performance indicators (KPIs), and dashboards to business intelligence decisions. |
| Investigate | Use the NYC311 dashboard to compare community districts, propose a tentative next step, and state an important limitation. |
Lecture slides
TipLecture slide shortcuts
Click inside the slide preview, then use:
- the visible ←/→ controls to page through the slides;
- your mouse wheel or trackpad to keep scrolling the weekly page;
- M to open the menu;
- F to enter fullscreen;
- E to enter or exit PDF export mode;
- Ctrl + Shift + F to search within the slides;
- Esc to exit the menu or fullscreen; and
- T to switch between dark and light mode.