Last Friday, I was in Dublin at #HPX17.
I had just heard Joe Schmidt open the conference. I was about to present an hour later so I edited my presentation after reflecting on some of Joe’s points.
I thought I would check my email feeds to see if anything else might need considering. An ABC article about Australian netball by Joel Werner and Jonathan Webb led me to tweet this:
#HPX17 #Abbotsthon17 A shoal of fish have swum into my presentation https://t.co/UKhUvmmEX4 for today's talk.
— Keith Lyons (@520507) October 6, 2017
I am instantly attracted to whatever Lisa Alexander (coach) and Mitch Mooney (analysts) do in netball but I did need to resist the temptation to delve with just 45 minutes before my presentation. I did add a link to the ABC article in one of my concluding slides and mentioned evolutionary algorithms as a one-liner for the audience’s consideration.
The title of my talk in Dublin was Performance Analysis and Data Analytics: Are We There Yet?
Almost a week later, I am back at the article. The day after Australia has taken a 3v0 lead against New Zealand in the Constellation Cup netball series.
The ABC article discusses Mitch’s interest in collective behaviour. I have had a long term interest in ethology and my posts have included discussions about starlings, sticklebacks, wildebeest, zebras and rhesus macaques.
Mitch’s use of a Voronoi visualisation caught my attention. (It appears as a gif in the ABC article.)
I am delighted Mitch and Lisa shared their thinking so openly. I am hopeful that this article might trigger lots of conversations about:
- Ethological insights into performance
- Coach analyst relationship
- Visualising and sharing data
These issues are embedded in my single slide in Dublin. Now I have lots of time to unpack them.
Yesterday I was writing about the visualisation of boxing data. Today it is netball.
I am hopeful that both Matthew Sankey and Gregory Voronoi have a place in our sharing of stories.
Photo Credit
Coaches watch at the AIS (Teresa Tan, ABC)
