About

My name is Ryan J. Parker, and I’m a 27 year old basketball geek living in Charleston, SC.

My Focus

The main goal of my basketball research is to understand how a team can increase their odds of winning games and championships. Thus I am interested in how individual players affect team performance, and what performance can be expected when 5 players are put together with each assigned a specific role.

In essence I am working to develop models that help us better understand what we know about a player based on his past performance, and what that past performance means when put together with a specific combination of players.

To read a little more about why I created this website, read my welcome post.

My Background

I am currently a senior at the College of Charleston and will graduate in May 2010 with a BS in math and statistics. My favorite courses came in the form of math stats, Bayesian statistical inference, and categorical data analysis. I’m currently taking courses in statistical learning and optimization that I hope to apply to basketball soon. I plan on attending NC State in the fall of 2010 to pursue a PhD in statistics.

My area of expertise is programming, as I wrote software for over 7 years professionally before going back to school full time in 2008. My goal is to bridge together my existing programming talents with my current learning in math to advance our understanding of the game of basketball.

Contact

I’m happy to answer any questions or respond to any feedback you may have about the website and my work, so feel free to e-mail me at ryan@basketballgeek.com