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CANA welcomes Jesse McNulty to the sports analytics team. Jesse is the former Director of Analytics for the Atlanta Blaze in Major League Lacrosse. After partnering with Jesse on numerous analytics projects over the past few years, he now has the opportunity through CANA to spread his expertise in sports analytics to multiple lacrosse teams and other sports. Jesse recently presented his work at SportCon and the wrote this informational post on the conference. The worlds of analytics and statistical analysis in sport are increasingly merging. This fact was celebrated by MinneAnalytics this past Friday as they hosted the second-annual SportCon event, located at Optum Headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. The wide-reaching conference, which featured an exhaustive array of sport teams executives, experts, hobbyists, and entrepreneurs from every corner of sports and technology offered plenty for all attendees to enjoy. Highlighted events in the morning sessions included the baseball panel featuring Jeremy Raadt and Daniel Adler from the Minnesota Twins along with Ty McDevitt and Patrick Casey of the University of Minnesota baseball team. During this session, the panelists provided their thoughts on the use, support structures, and coaching best practices for maximizing objective analysis in the game. Next featured a presentation from Prof. Rodney Paul of Syracuse University who provided economic analysis to attendance data in Canadian Major Junior Hockey. Prof. Paul evaluated league attendance for the Ontario Hockey League, Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and Western Hockey League across some variables ranging from winning percentage, weather, rostered prospects, and many more. To round out the morning session, I presented on Analysis in Major League Lacrosse. This presentation provided a focus on the "version 2.0", expanding upon the work being done over the last 24-months and discussed at the inaugural SportCon the previous year. The presentation was well-received and insightful questions from attendees on opportunities for growth, data collection, team structures, and future marketing opportunities were asked and discussed. In addition to panels, speakers, start-up company showcases, and presentations, the SportCon event also included a tasty lunch, a midday mascot rampage from the Timberwolves, Wild, Vikings, and the independent league baseball team, the St. Paul Saints. Also, a series of professionals showed off drone racing, and members of the Drone Racing League (DRL) flew drones in, around, and over lunch attendees. The lunch session provided an opportunity for plenty of networking opportunities. I was seated with Nick Restifo of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Seth Partnow of the Milwaukee Bucks, and Prof. Zakary Mayo of St. Mary's University of Minnesota. Much of our conversation was centered around thoughts and reflections from the morning session on Analytics in Major League Lacrosse. Debates and insights around the topics of draft analysis, player performance monitoring, and league-wide data support was had and provided a variety of thought experiments into our present collection process, marketing of league data and materials, and future considerations with the collection of in-game events. A highlighted session from this afternoon featured Prof. Tyler Bosch of the University of Minnesota and Dexalytics on monitoring and individualization of performance data in college athletes. Dr. Bosch focused much of his talk on providing frameworks for understanding differences in training responses. Perhaps in the coming years, integrating analytics into the collegiate ranks through the lens of human performance can help close the gap on a variety of focuses within science and sports medicine. The 2018 SportCon event was well organized and serves to illuminate further research in the science and statistical analysis of sport. Also, SportCon hopes to elevate the burgeoning world of sports tech. Walt DeGrange is a Principal Operations Research Analyst at CANA Advisors. To read more on Sports Analytics and article by other members of the CANA Team visit the CANA Blog. #sports #sportsanalytics #SportsCon #JesseMcNulty #WaltDeGrange #MinneAnalytics #Analytics #Dexalytics

Purpose CANA took on a pro-bono project supporting the Blind and Visually Impaired Center of Monterey County, a not-for-profit organization serving individuals on the peninsula. The Monterey Center needed to project the future population of the visually impaired in their areas of interest - Monterey, Salinas, Carmel, and Carmel Valley, California - to better position their limited resources to the population. To approach this problem, we took a two-step approach using existing data to determine the risk of vision loss as a function of location, age, and sex and applying those factors to the projected demographics of communities on the Central Coast. The main source of data for this project is the American Fact Finder, created by the U.S. Census Bureau, specifically table C18103 "Sex by Age by Vision Difficulty." Figure 1: Screenshot of the American Fact Finder interface, captured 17 October 2016 Summary data from the years 2008-2015 is captured as separate Microsoft Excel files from the web page. These files are then processed and brought together as summary data for predictions. This somewhat mundane task is aided by a set of automated routines built in the R. Specifically, we captured each spreadsheet in a list and then iterated over the list to extract the by-year columns. In addition to the State of California, we also collected data for Monterey County, San Francisco County, the City of Salinas, and the San Jose metro area. This dataset lacks some elements we would like to include, such as veteran status, income, and ethnicity. However, we feel that these variables are controlled for by the metropolitan area sufficient for the purposes of this project. Figure 2: Map of the Central California Region We then turn to the first task, which is analyzing the loss of vision as persons age by location and sex. While we compiled this information for each area, we present the results for Monterey County only. Figure 3: Boxplot of Proportion of Visually Impaired population by Sex and Age The boxplot of risk, showing the average incidence of Visual Impairment (solid line) variability per year (box), is the most interesting artifact. Projecting the future impaired population of Pacific Grove, CA Pacific Grove, California (zip code 93950), is a small city. It is unique because there is, for all practical purposes, no undeveloped land, and the local government actively works to keep the city size stable. For our purposes, we consider the city's population to be fixed. From our previous analysis, we determined that the percentage of the Visually Impaired population by age is: under 18, .6%, 18-64, 1.1%, and over 64, 6.2%. Sex is not a significant determinant in visual impairment for this population. The demographics of Pacific Grove are below: Based on the information determined above, we estimate that in 2020, the Visually Impaired population of Pacific Grove, California will be approximately 335 persons. This is slightly higher than our current estimate of 315 in 2015. Discussion There are two factors that contribute to the very low (less than 1%) growth in visual impairment in Pacific Grove. These are 1. No population growth in the city. There are no undeveloped areas in Pacific Grove; the current population number will almost certainly remain constant. By way of comparison, Pacific Grove had negative population growth between 2000 and 2010. 2. No growth in the over 64 population. The population greatest at risk, those over 64 years old, are unlikely to see strong growth in the near- to mid-term. This is because the city already has a substantial older population. See a comparison of Pacific Grove demographics with Salinas City, below. Conclusion and Next Steps This work took a fast look at predicting the incidence of Visual Impairment using census data. This work did not account for differences in education, work experience, or veteran's status with respect to loss of sight. We were surprised to discover how uniform the rates of visual impairment are across the populations of Central California; in the future, we may consider how California compares with other States and/or Countries. It would be worthwhile to consider the data that various agencies may have as part of their records. This work only considered the incidence of Visual Impairment but did not consider the causes or different treatments/services required by that population. Acknowledgments This work was supported in part by a grant from the CANA Foundation. #CANAFoundation #AmericanFactFinder #Census #blind #visuallyimpaired #outreach #Incidence #Monterey #demographics #dataset #California #Salinas #PacificGrove

CANA would like to thank you all for a great 2016 and wishes you all the very best for the new year. Let's make 2017 fantastic! #CANA #CANAFoundation #family #newyear #team

“This is the best talk I’ve attended in over a year.”- Harrison Schramm You may know Harrison Schramm from his “5 Minute Analyst” articles and blog posts, and when he isn’t thinking of the cost of the Death Star or solving the logistics problems of Harry Potter, he also is one of CANA Advisors’ Principal Operations Research Analysts. Recently he had the opportunity to go to a FiveThirtyEight Talk on Telling Stories (at the RStudio::conf ). In his words, Harrison said, “[t]his is the best talk I’ve attended in over a year.” In a change of pace from writing a blog post or article on the talk, we asked Harrison if he would share his notes on the event, and he was kind enough to pass them along. We hope these notes spark your interest in not just the ‘how’ but the ‘why’ of statistical analysis. ****From the Event Notebook of Harrison Schramm**** Data Journalism Principles: Story leads data follows use rigorous but interminable methods: Be accurate, Be fast, and Be transparent. Useful tools for R. tidyverse is the tool of choice for data. (The tidyverse is a set of packages that work in harmony because they share common data representations and API design. https://blog.rstudio.org/2016/09/15/tidyverse-1-0-0/) In the interest of transparency, FiveThityEight has created an R package. (Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight uses statistical analysis — hard numbers — to tell compelling stories about politics, sports, science, economics and culture. https://github.com/fivethirtyeight). For example, if you would like to see a breakdown of Avengers Characters by longevity and gender, you can do the following: Install.packages(“fivethirtyeight”) Library(ggplot2); library(magrittr); library(“fivethirtyeight”) avengers %>% ggplot(aes(factor(death1), years_since_joining)) + geom_violin() + facet_wrap(~gender) + xlab("Currently Living?") + ylab("Years Since Joining") + ggtitle("Avengers Characters Violin Plot - Status vs. Years") The Six Types of Data Stories Novelty Outlier Archetype Trend Debunking Forecast Novelty Data Story: Basic questions are first. New Data Story danger: Triviality Remedy: Simple Summaries Ask yourself: Is this data meaningful to others? Outlier Stories Danger: Spurious Result Tactic: Characters - talk about who the outlier is: who is it, what company is it, etc. Profile one of the characters from the outlier group, then introduce the statistics Ask yourself: Is this really so different? Archetype Stories Danger: Oversimplification Tactic: Modeling Ask Yourself: What Variables am I leaving out? Trend Trends: Terrorism overall declining in the EU, but religiously inspired attacks rising. Done using dplyr, data %>% group_by %>% summarize %>% ggplot Danger: Variance - regression to the mean Tactic: Be Conservative Ask yourself: Is this signal or noise? Fun Quote: If you can always tell a valid trend, you should be trading on wall street, not telling data stories Debunking Bechdel test: Examines how women are portrayed in movies. 1. Are there 2 or more women, 2. Do they talk to each other, 3. Do they talk to each other about something other than men? Danger: Confirmation Bias - your own belief in the debunking action. Tactic: Showcase Failures Ask Yourself: How much do I want to debunk this? Quote about p-hacking: Warning: This is evil (statistical) work. Do not go to the dark side. Do not try this at home. Note: You can read Harrison’s piece on P-hacking appearing in OR/MS Today here: https://www.informs.org/ORMS-Today/Public-Articles/June-Volume-43-Number-3/P-value-Primer-P-OR-P-values-in-operations-research-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T Example of p-hacking: Eating potato chips leads to higher SAT Math scores. Forecast (You work a narrow path here) Danger: Overfitting Tactic: Simulations and scenarios Ask Yourself: Am I properly conveying the uncertainty in my model? We hope these notes from Harrison Schramm on R and how to use it to tell a story with your statistical and analytical data is useful. Follow Harrison (@5MinuteAnalyst on twitter) and the rest of the CANA Advisors’ Team (@CANAADVISORS on Facebook and twitter) for more insight, blog posts and articles devolving into data, logistics and analytics in creative and helpful ways. Other interesting CANA Articles on R: Blog Article: Document Preparation... in R? http://www.canallc.com/single-post/2016/09/02/Document-Preparation-in-R Blog Article: Notes on The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom http://www.canallc.com/single-post/2016/09/16/Notes-on-The-Seven-Pillars-of-Statistical-Wisdom #stories #R #5MinuteAnalyst #FiveThirtyEight #Rmarkdown #RStudio #bigdata #datatype #datastory #CANA #tidyverse

My daughter is quite into Harry Potter. She's read all the books, has all the T-shirts, knows many of the spells by heart. I am not so much into Harry Potter; my preferred fantasy realm is the Lord of the Rings. I enjoy her enjoyment of it, however, and have been watching the movies with her when she invites me to. A few days ago, she asked me what it would be like if there were real wizards - that studied and learned the magic words and using only their wits and maybe a stick, were able to do magic and tame monsters. Without missing a beat, I replied - There really are wizards like that - they are called statisticians! She didn't *quite* believe me at first, and that's ok. I pointed out to her that in our work we: 1. Spend hours learning new 'spells', which are short and very powerful. Harry Potter and company have 'expelliarmus' as their 'go to' incantation. My current 'go-to' incantation is dplyr::group_by() 2. Use these spells to fight ever larger and more exotic 'monsters'. In Harry Potter's world, each episode brings on ever more terrifying beasts - from Basilisks to Dementors. In the practice of statistics, we use our spells to tame ever more dangerous monsters, like text, unstructured data, and 'big' data. 3. No matter how many spells they learn at Hogwarts, Harry Potter himself - and his imagination - are the key, irreplaceable elements in his magic. In the practice of Statistics, this has never been more true! Coda: The other night, I had cast one of my 'magical spells' and was waiting for the result. As my script was running, I began unconsciously repeating my own incantation: DontCrashDontCrashDontCrashDontCrash - Didn't Crash! From around the corner, I heard my daughter, without missing a beat reply "Good Job, Daddy!" :-) Original Post Published on February 5, 2017 from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/harry-potter-fields-data-harrison-schramm-cap-pstat HARRY POTTER characters, names and related indicia are © & ™ Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. J.K. ROWLING'S WIZARDING WORLD ™ J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. #HarryPotter #math #wizards #HarrisonSchramm #statisticians #statisitcs #data

Professional conferences are important for keeping sharp with the practice of Analytics. For many people (including myself) the highlight of the professional year is the INFORMS Business Analytics conference, held in the Spring each year. This year’s conference was held at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. CANA Advisors has a strong presence at this meeting, with our Director, Analytics Norm Reitter President of the partner society MORS, Walt DeGrange as Chair of the SpORts Analytics Section, and Harrison Schramm as Chair of the Analytics Cluster. This short photo-blog will cover the conference from Harrison’s point of view. This year was different for me; I have attended this conference twice before, and have previously presented, as have CANA Colleagues Rob Cranston and Walt DeGrange. This year, my focus was completely on the Edelman Competition. Sharing a beer with junior analysts during the ‘career connection’ Monday afternoon. The Edelman Prize The Franz Edelman Prize is regarded as the most prestigious award given in our profession. This year, Harrison had the opportunity to serve on the committee, and had the further opportunity to be a coach for a team from BARCO based in Belgium. To qualify as a finalist, BARCO’s proposal was selected from a field of 25 entrants. The quality of their work – and financial impact – were independently verified by INFORMS. Their project was an optimization project that streamlined BARCO’s production chain from 17 individual products to 3 ‘platforms’. Kristoph, Maud, Robert and Harrison before the Edelman Competition The prize session is very rigorous, with the doors ‘locking’ at the start of the session, and time strictly controlled to 40 minutes. The presentations are professionally developed and recorded for re-broadcast. Kristoph describing the concept of platforms during the prize session I was truly energized by meeting and working with the BARCO team, and would like to congratulate the Holiday Retirements team for their win. The Edelman Gala The Edelman Gala truly is the Math Oscars. In addition to the Edelman finalists, other INFORMS prizes are awarded. We would like to congratulate our colleagues and friends in the US Air Force, who shared the INFORMS Prize for sustained excellence in Operations Research with the Walt Disney Company. It was a ‘double win’ for Air Force, as the US Air Force Academy won the George Smith Prize. MORS Fellow Dr. Jacquline Henningsen and MORS Sponsor Kevin Williams receiving the INFORMS Award at the Edelman honors reception Each of the finalists are inducted into the Edelman Academy and receive recognition in the form of an individual medal and team trophy. Harrison (Coach, left) with the BARCO team at the INFORMS Awards Gala In summary, involvement with the Edelman committee is one of the highlights of my professional life, and I am grateful for the opportunity to serve. I hope to see you at INFORMS Analytics 2018, in Baltimore! CANA’s Harrison Schramm and Norm Reitter at the FICO-sponsored VIP After-Party. #Edelman #GeorgeSmithPrize #BARCO #FranzEdelmanPrize #INFORMS #Analytics #conference #Business #CANAAdvisors #award #OperationsResearch #5MinuteAnalyst

The CANA team continued their longstanding professional involvement with the Military Operations Research Society (MORS) at the MORS Emerging Techniques Forum, 5-6 December 2017. This was a dynamic and interesting program, featuring speakers from the National Academy of Engineering, General Motors, MITRE, Mayo Clinic, and the Center for a New American Security. Topics ranged the gamut of emerging techniques and included diverse topics such as autonomous systems, Climate Change, and the whole of government approaches to conflict. CANA had a robust presence at the meeting as well, with our Director of Analytics, Norm Reitter, as Immediate Past President of the Society and moderator of the Sponsor’s Panel. Principal Analyst Walt DeGrange taught the capstone session of the Certificate Course in Military OR in conjunction with the meeting. Principal Analyst Harrison Schramm served as co-chair this year; Harrison was the inaugural chair of this meeting in 2016. Other attendees were CANA’s President, Rob Cranston, Principal Analyst Carol DeZwarte, and Senior Analyst John Moore. (L-R) Norm Reitter, Walt DeGrange, and Harrison Schramm relaxing before the ETF. This year’s meeting was slightly better attended than last year’s, and MORS has decided to transition this to a recurring, annual event. Look to the spring for an announcement for next year’s Meeting to be held in the fall of 2018! #MORS #MORSForum #emergingtechnologies #HarrisonSchramm #NormReitter #WaltDeGrange #CarolDeZwarte #RobCranston #JohnMoore #CANAAdvisors #MayoClinic #MITRE

Leadership Through Example CANA would like to highlight our very own Director of Analytics Mr. Norman Reitter for his leadership both here at CANA and his leadership as the President of MORS this past year. A bit about Norm’s Year We would like to take a minute to mark Mr. Norman Reitter for finishing up an incredible year as President of the Military Operations Research Society (MORS). His term ended at noon on Thursday, 22 June. His presidency serves as a capstone to his time serving as a Director of the Society. We, his friends and colleagues on the Board, would like to highlight some of his achievements and accomplishments. This year, Norm oversaw many new initiatives for the Society. Of most immediate note, he saw the Society hold their first Symposium outside the National Capitol Region since 2012. He also oversaw successful special meetings, including April’s Educational Colloquium featuring Rear Admiral Jesse Wilson as keynote speaker, October’s Wargaming Meeting, featuring Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, and the first-of-its-kind Emerging Techniques Meeting in December. This past year also saw the first MORS Certificate Program (MCP) certificates awarded to 29 students in Wargaming. The Wargaming MCP provided training available nowhere else and filled a critical professional development need in the national security analytics workforce. Additionally, Norm’s leadership as past VP-Finance and Management, plus his time as President-Elect has seen Society return to financial stability. The Society also saw growth in the focus on the younger members in the community, and a re-invigoration in publications – both the member magazine PHANALX and the MORS Journal. Norm passing the MORS gavel to new President-Elect Joe Adams As a Past President, Norm joins a strong heritage and will be serving the National Security Analysis Community for years to come. Finally, it has been our distinct privilege to serve alongside Norm, both in our jobs and in MORS. His calm demeanor and easygoing style really champion others and brings out the best in his colleagues. Thank you, Norm! Walt DeGrange, VP-Professional Development Harrison Schramm, Advisory Director. #2017 #MORS #leadership #management #NormReitter #CANA #wargaming #Analytics #nationalsecurity #emergingtechniques

I recently read "The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom," recommended by my friend and colleague Scott Nestler. It is an interesting and well written guide to statistics. It is unique because it includes advanced mathematics like interwoven with readable text. It includes interesting stories about how statistics shaped society and Man's understanding of the world, as well as how statistics came into its own as a scientific discipline. The first chapter, Aggregation, tells the story of how statistical reasoning helped early scientists determine the ratio and shape of the Earth. One passage that struck me in particular was the discussion of Frank Weldon's experimental exploration of a question posed by Karl Pearson. I repeat it in its entirety: ...In a heroic effort to gain a better understanding of chance, Frank Weldon had thrown 12 dice at a time and for each group of 12 counted how many of the dice showed a 5 or a 6. He repeated that experiment a total of 26,306 times. The total number of single die tosses was then 315,672.... Imagine one man doing all of that by hand. In one report, Weldon did indicate that his wife had assisted him; one can still wonder about the stress on the marriage. (p. 181) Since this article is written in Markdown (see previous blog post), we can repeat that experiment right now, using our computer: tot.time = system.time({nreps = 26306 result = vector() for(i in 1:nreps){ result[i] = sum(sample(x = 1:6, size = 12, replace = TRUE)>4) }}) hist(result, main = paste("Histogram of 5s and 6s in ", nreps, " replicatons")) This procedure took 1.03 seconds on my laptop. It is astonishing - and humbling - to think of what early statisticians had to do to convince themselves that their theories were, in fact, sound. (Markdown is a simple formatting syntax for authoring HTML, PDF, and MS Word documents. For more details on using R Markdown see http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com). #aggregation #RMarkdown #Markdown #Schramm #statisticalanalysis #statistics #RStudio #ScottNestler #FrankWeldon #KarlPearson

New are the hopes and aspirations, new are the resolutions, new are the spirits and new is the year! Here’s wishing that you be embraced with a glorious one and meet all your future endeavors with victory and triumph. And if you need some help along the way CANA Advisors is here for you. From all of us here at CANA Advisors to all of you, Here is to a great 2018 and beyond! Happy New Year!!! CANA Advisors A Veteran-Owned and Woman-Owned Company. © CANA LLC 2018 #happynewyear #Analytics #logistics #technologies #CANAAdvisors #teamwork #team

CANA is proud to announce that Walt DeGrange has been elected as the Vice President for Professional Development of the Military Operations Research Society (MORS). As VP for Professional Development, Walt will be responsible for the MORS continuing education program, communities of practice, annual Educational and Professional Development Colloquium, and publications- including the MOR Journal and Phalanx magazine. Walt's election to this critical MORS position is a direct reflection of the years of dedicated effort that he has provided to MORS and his commitment to continued service. CANA is pleased to support Walt in this new role as we continue to also support MORS through volunteer leadership and as a Partner. *To learn more about MORs visit their website at http://www.mors.org/ *Follow Walt on Twitter @ltwalt ‏or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/waltdegrange/ #WaltDeGrange #MORS #professionaldevelopment #congratulations #instructor #teacher #mentor

It is our pleasure to announce the promotion of Walt DeGrange to Director of Analytics Capabilities, a new position at CANA LLC that we fondly have been referring to as the "DAC." We are excited to work with Walt in this new director-level position to help develop, implement, and improve CANA's already formidable analytics capabilities - our analytics talent (our team!), our analytics software & hardware, and our analytics best practices. This has been a careful, thorough process, and Walt has demonstrated excellent leadership and dedication to CANA's team, culture, and clients since coming aboard in August of 2014. A few examples include establishing what has become a signature part of our internal analytics growth & development - our team’s monthly "CANA Analytics Roundtable;" leading and managing one of our long-term projects in support of the USMC MARCORLOGCOM in Albany, GA; and contributing his sense of humor, Zen-like calm, and innovative ideas to our various company offsites (leading multiple key breakout groups). Walt has many years of applying Operations Research (OR), educating practitioners, and leading organizations that focus on delivering analytics. He is an outstanding fit for helping CANA continue to develop a highly effective, virtual team - the hallmark of CANA's success. Please join us in congratulating Walt on this promotion to the DAC!! #2018 #WaltDeGrange #CANA #DAC #congratulations #promotion #newposition