Overview

Welcome to the webpage for the 2019 CMSAC Football Analytics Workshop! Led by Ron Yurko, the CMSAC football analytics workshop is a three-hour event (5 to 8 PM), with the first hour dedicated to introducing attendees to reading, wrangling, and visualizing publicly available NFL data with the R statistical programming language, specifically using the tidyverse. The third hour of the workshop will cover the basics of using R to generate Elo ratings for NFL teams, a popular rating system featured on websites such as FiveThirtyEight. The middle hour of the workshop features our keynote speaker, Michael Lopez, who will discuss his work as the NFL Director of Data and Analytics. No prior programming experience is required.

Please follow the steps below for set-up prior to arrival at the workshop.

Installing R and RStudio:

For Mac Users:

To Install R:

  • Open an internet browser and go to www.r-project.org.
  • Click the “download R” link in the middle of the page under “Getting Started.”
  • Select a CRAN location (a mirror site) and click the corresponding link.
  • Click on the “Download R for (Mac) OS X” link at the top of the page.
  • Click on the file containing the latest version of R under “Files.”
  • Save the .pkg file, double-click it to open, and follow the installation instructions.

Now that R is installed, you need to download and install RStudio. To Install RStudio: + Go to www.rstudio.com and click on the “Download RStudio” button. + Click on “Download RStudio Desktop.” + Click on the version recommended for your system, or the latest Mac version, save the .dmg file on your computer, double-click it to open, and then drag and drop it to your applications folder.

For Windows Users:

To Install R:

  • Open an internet browser and go to www.r-project.org.
  • Click the “download R” link in the middle of the page under “Getting Started.”
  • Select a CRAN location (a mirror site) and click the corresponding link.
  • Click on the “Download R for Windows” link at the top of the page.
  • Click on the “install R for the first time” link at the top of the page.
  • Click “Download R for Windows” and save the executable file somewhere on your computer. Run the .exe file and follow the installation instructions.

Now that R is installed, you need to download and install RStudio. To Install RStudio:

  • Go to www.rstudio.com and click on the “Download RStudio” button.
  • Click on “Download RStudio Desktop.”
  • Click on the version recommended for your system, or the latest Windows version, and save the executable file.
  • Run the .exe file and follow the installation instructions.

Installing tidyverse:

Open RStudio, then in the console proceed to enter the following command:

Then make sure the tidyverse suite of packages are successfully installed by running:

RStudio Cloud

As an alternative to installing R and RStudio on your computer, you can use the free, browser-based RStudio Cloud: https://rstudio.cloud/ Use this option if you run into any installation issues with R, RStudio, or the tidyverse suite of packages.

Click on the ‘Get Started’ button. You will be asked to create an account, which is free, provided you have an email to use. Once you make an account, click on the ‘New Project’ button. In there you should rename the project to be “CMSAC-football” at the top, and then your use of R is ready to go within the browser!