About this blog

I've created this blog to combine two things that I spend a substantial amount of my time doing: analyzing data and following football (soccer).

I'm an astrophysicist by training, receiving my PhD from Cambridge University in 2006 and spending six years as postdoctoral researcher in Canada and the USA, first at McGill University and then Yale. I returned to the UK to work as a quantitative researcher at London-based hedge fund, and then in the UK Government. I'm now a Lecturer and Research Scientist at Harvard University working on issues related to data science, sports analytics and machine learning.

I grew up in a football-obsessed house (and a football-hating mother). There was consequently a lot of football 'debate', with lots of random football 'statistics' being lobbed around. So I guess that in starting this blog i'm returning to my youth in some ways (plus my Liverpool-supporting brother is going to help edit).

As I said at the top, the principal aim is to write a football-orientated data blog. I am going to use whatever data I can get my hands on to try to explore interesting questions or statements, investigate some of football's considerable store of 'conventional wisdom' and generally see if I can find any new or interesting perspectives.

The second goal is to try to keep things simple. Wherever possible I want to try to extract whatever story the data has to tell without having to write thousands of words explaining how I did it. Same for plots: I'm going to try to aim for a maximum of one per post.

 If you want to get in contact, I can be emailed at: 
Laurie Shaw

Comments

  1. Unknown22 February 2018 at 08:01

    In the last paragraph is an error: "having to having to".

    ReplyDelete
  2. Omar31 January 2021 at 21:39

    I’m coming from the Bloomberg article about your signing with Manchester City data analysis team. As a 3rd year physics student (and a big Real Madrid fan) I admire people like you, who has reached a significant level in theoretical research combined with cutting edge solutions for private industry. As soon as I end my exams I’ll start reading all your posts and eventually comment conclusions that come to my mind.
    My best regards!

    ReplyDelete

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