{"id":1730,"date":"2012-11-26T23:31:06","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T03:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2012-11-26T23:31:06","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T03:31:06","slug":"operations-research-and-a-baseball-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2012\/11\/26\/operations-research-and-a-baseball-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Operations Research and a Baseball Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

Analytics is getting to be more and more important in sports, and sports teams and leagues are looking to people with analytical skills to fill key roles in their organizations. \u00a0 The MIT Sports Analytics conference<\/a> is a big deal, attracting more than 2000 attendees, with an active job placement service. \u00a0The MBAs at my own school (the Tepper School<\/a>) now has a sports analytics club<\/a>, with a speaker series, case competition and more (including fun things like fantasy sports competitions) and many of these exceptionally bright and ambitious students are eager for jobs in the sports industry. \u00a0While some of this may be due to the success of\u00a0Moneyball<\/a><\/em>, much more of this is due to the fact that computers and decision making have gotten much, much better in the last years, making analytics a key competitive advantage. \u00a0And when you get past dashboards and basic data analysis and visualization, you move into using data to make better decisions. \u00a0In other words, you move into operations research.<\/p>\n

It is clear that many clubs in Major League Baseball get it. \u00a0I see it when talking to people with my local team, the Pittsburgh Pirates (a team that I am sure will break .500 any year now!), and I just got a job announcement that shows that the next closest team to me, the Cleveland Indians, get it too. \u00a0They are looking for a VP-Technology, but it is clear that they see this as a job involving decision making, not just infrastructure. \u00a0From the ad<\/a>, the primary purpose is:<\/p>\n

The Vice President of Technology is responsible for developing, implementing, measuring and maintaining
\nplans that advance the organization\u2019s achievement of its guiding commitments through enhanced
\nBaseball Operations and business decision-making tools, increased effectiveness of systems, hardware,
\ntechnology infrastructure and improved fan experience through fan-centric technology implementations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love the “decision-making tools” in that description. \u00a0Sounds just right for an operations research person who also understands technology.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Analytics is getting to be more and more important in sports, and sports teams and leagues are looking to people with analytical skills to fill key roles in their organizations. \u00a0 The MIT Sports Analytics conference is a big deal, attracting more than 2000 attendees, with an active job placement service. \u00a0The MBAs at my … Continue reading “Operations Research and a Baseball Job”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,31,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-analytics","category-jobs-in-or","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}