The Abacus and the Canvas - Luca’s Blog

Random walks in data science and soccer

Book review - The Sound and the Glory

My review of Matt Pentz’s captivating book
book review
Seattle Sounders
MLS
soccer
“ .. we’re a little bit up here in the Northwest, counterculture, smaller-city attitude, and having big stars isn’t that important to us. Having quality people is…
Jan 15, 2025
Luca Cazzanti

Can a winless season still be a success?

Reflections from a successful losing season coaching high school soccer
coaching
training
leadership
learning
“Success is not about winning trophies, it’s about making a positive impact on and off the field” - Mikel Arteta
Nov 11, 2024
Luca Cazzanti

Quinn - Supportive connector in the midfield

A quick study of NWSL midfielder Quinn’s passing patterns
quinn
nwsl
passing networks
statsbomb
player analysis
python
Quinn are one of those midfielders who do not get the same media attention of other big soccer stars, yet play an important role in keeping their team connected on the…
Jan 29, 2023
Luca Cazzanti

Exploring soccer heatmaps from Tracab XML files with tfutils.py

tfutils.py is a Python library for reading and interacting with soccer data from Tracab XML files.
soccer analytics
python
tracab
heatmap
xml
A Tracab TF05 feed is an XML file that contains data about a soccer match. In particular, a TF05 feed provides various flavors of heatmaps of the two teams and of the…
Nov 20, 2022
Luca Cazzanti

Attacking corner kicks - A case study

A case study of attacking corner kicks by Spanish club SD Eibar.
set piece analysis
corner kicks
opponent report
pre-match report
soccer analytics
DartFish
I briefly present the structure of a typical analyst report about an opponent’s attacking corner kicks in soccer. Then, I walk through an example of this type of report…
Jun 11, 2022
Luca Cazzanti

Effectiveness and location of pressure actions in soccer

Exploring the relationship between winning record, high-press, and pressure effectiveness.
soccer analytics
high-press
In this activity I explore the relationship between team performance and team pressure behavior using data from the English Premiere League season 2020-2021. I focus on…
Jan 14, 2022
Luca Cazzanti

Confidence intervals for Gamma distribution parameters

Estimating the confidence intervals of the paramters of the Gamma distribution from data.
statistics
estimation
gamma
I use visualization and bootstrap to obtain empirical confidence intervals for the estimates of the \(k\) parameter of a Gamma distribution. I consider the dependency of the…
May 29, 2016
Luca Cazzanti

Know your questions

Recognizing the types of questions you are asking throughout a data analysis project.
data analysis
Articulating precisely the question you are asking of the data gives clarity and focus to your data analysis. A complication is that often a data analysis flows through…
Apr 7, 2016
Luca Cazzanti

Merging sensor data streams with Python generators and priority queues

How I used Python generators to process streaming data from maritime sensors.
sensors
streaming data
python
generators
A recurring task in multi-sensor data processing is merging – or interleaving – data from multiple sensors while maintaining chronological order. For example, you may be…
Mar 19, 2016
Luca Cazzanti
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