93: How to Leverage Sports Analytics for a Standout Dataviz Portfolio — Featuring Shri Khalpada
Mar 29, 2024
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Shri Khalpada, a Principal Software Engineer at Cleaning the Glass, shares insights on leveraging sports analytics for a standout dataviz portfolio. Topics include navigating data cleaning challenges in NBA analytics, visualizing sports analytics for career success, and using heat maps and color coding in visualization. Learn how to enhance your portfolio with sports analytics!
Cleaning the Glass provides exclusive stats by filtering out 'garbage time,' valuable for NBA teams and journalists.
Transition to sports analytics involves initiative, collaboration, and a unique perspective to secure opportunities in the field.
Deep dives
Unique NBA Data Insights
Cleaning the Glass offers exclusive stats not found elsewhere by filtering out data from non-competitive moments known as 'garbage time,' providing valuable insights for accurate analyses. This selective approach ensures that the data used is relevant and impactful for sports analytics, setting it apart as a valuable resource for NBA teams and journalists alike.
Navigating Complex Data Cleaning
The process of cleaning NBA data involves human judgment and rule-based algorithms to determine the significance of game contexts. Factors such as player lineups and game situations influence the data filtering process, requiring nuanced decisions to ensure data accuracy. Despite imperfections, a diligent and systematic approach is employed to enhance the quality of the sports analytics data.
Transition to Sports Analytics Career
Sri Kalpata's transition to sports analytics stemmed from launching a data-driven project during the pandemic with a friend, leading to collaboration with Cleaning the Glass. By showcasing initiative, reaching out to industry experts, and demonstrating a unique perspective on analytics projects, Sri successfully secured an opportunity in the competitive sports analytics field.
Balancing Productivity and Creativity
The distinction between productivity and creativity is highlighted in the context of data visualization tasks, emphasizing the need for different approaches to each aspect. Encouraging a blend of creativity and productivity, allowing for flexibility in work styles and promoting neurodiversity in workplace culture can enhance innovation and efficiency in data-centric projects.
Are you looking for ways to make your work stand out in a crowded industry, like sports? Or maybe looking for a topic with pretty clean data to create a portfolio project? In today’s episode, we’re chatting with Shri Khalpada, a D.C. area creative coder and Principal Software Engineer at Cleaning the Glass, which is an NBA analytics website founded by Ben Faulk that’s available to the public and also has more robust tools for NBA teams. Shri shares how he increased his chances of landing a coveted sports analytics job, and a few lessons he’s learned working with sports data that can be applied to any dataviz job.