By Zach Slaton, Contributor Every movement has roles that need to be played, and the sports analytics movement is no different.  The prophet of this nerdy-niche-gone-mainstream-discipline is clearly Bill James.  His most famous disciple that is widely credited with the first wide scale, successful use of Jamesian theories is Billy Beane.  The analytics gospel may just be Moneyball, with its creative story telling combined with real life use of alternative statistical thinking that spawned a slew of other books on a whole range of uses for analytics within a variety of sports.  Thus, the movement’s prophet, most famous disciple, and gospel have been accounted for, leaving only the role of the congregation of followers and its annual congregational meeting to be identified.  Enter the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, although its organizers would eschew the religious analogy for one based in the sports world.  They view the conference as something akin to the Super Bowl – the culmination of a year’s worth of analytics work in a variety of sports that come together once a year to expose a wide array of media members, academics, and league/team leaders to the best analytics research and discussion available. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest