Researchers Use Science to Identify Soccer Stars

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

June 16, 2010

Until now, rating the world's best soccer players was often based on a fan's personal sense of the game. But researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., recently developed a computer program that, for the first time, measures player success based on objective assessments of performance instead of opinion.

Luis Amaral, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern, says that while basketball and baseball offer a wealth of statistical data to gauge the performance of individual players--such as runs batted in, strikeouts, steals and rebounds--this isn't the case with soccer.

So he and a team of researchers used their computational skills to write software that pulled play-by-play statistical information from the 2008 Euro Cup website.

Their results closely matched the opinions of sports reporters who covered the matches as well as the team of experts, coaches and managers that subjectively chose players for the "best of" tournament teams.

Amaral says this kind of analysis, published today in a Public Library of Science journal, PLoS ONE, can be used outside of the world of soccer. For example, companies could use the method to measure the performance of employees working together on a team project.

The National Science Foundation's Science of Science & Innovation Program, in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate, partially funded the research. The project is the outgrowth of an effort to develop transparent, statistically-sound methods to describe the productivity of researchers and institutions, and the impact of their work.

Read more about Northwestern's soccer study on the university's website.

-NSF-

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2010, its budget is about $6.9 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives over 45,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes over 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards over $400 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117162&org=NSF&from=news

[Niels Bohr 72]

For the scientifically declined,

This research will make database optimization better. For a layman who know little scientific principle, do not know the need for this. A computer science major may look at this scenario as an algorithm that would help in database searches, etc...

Why is there a need to improve database searches? Simple. More and more data are being stored in the World Wide web. Soon, the time complexity of the searches increase. And, there needs to be a better way of sorting, searching, or indexing those data.

There are so many other applications from this research as mentioned in the article.

Abstraction is key to application.

Edited June 19, 2010 by Niels Bohr