Moneyball for college

THE BEST LAID PLANS
Overplanned Analytics Initiatives Are Doomed to Fail
The road to changing the fundamental decision-making culture of an organization always has twists and turns. So what separates the ones who navigate them successfully from those that don’t? - Mode

SPLASH BROTHERS
Goodbye, Mid-Range Shot
A nice visual exploration of the slow—and then sudden—decline of basketball players shooting from the “mid-range” part of the court. It’s all about 3-pointers now, baby. - Flowing Data

INNER LIVES
What Can Neural Networks Learn?
It’s tricky to know what neural networks are actually learning as they’re trained. This post does a good job breaking down what’s going on inside. - Data Science and Robots

THINKING CAP
The ‘Moneyball’ Solution for Higher Education
4 out of 10 students who start college and don’t finish in at least six years. Georgia State’s predictive analytics system monitors 800 different academic risk factors and identifies students who need support to graduate on time. - Politico

TIDY UP
Solving the Model Representation Problem With broom
An introduction to the broom package, which aims to create a framework for representing statistical models, estimation methods, and fits with R objects. - Alex Hayes