Steel Wagstaff
Trying to do good things for good reasons
Tag: sports
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NBA Champions and Scoring Data: Further Reflections
In the last post, I looked at a few statistical measures to get at just how exceptional the 2014 San Antonio Spurs were in relation to previous NBA champions, particularly in regards to their approach to scoring. By those measures, they had the least ‘top-heavy’ distribution of points of any NBA champion, and it wasn’t…
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NBA Champions & Scoring Data: Some Initial Impressions about the 2014 Spurs
One of my personal/professional goals for this summer has been to learn how to work with and visualize data. I want to know how to make beautiful data visualizations, and tell interesting stories with the use of data. To that end, I’ve started working through some self-directed reading, and signed up for a couple of…
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My Initiation Into Fantasy Football
It’s been more than two months since I’ve last written on this blog. A lot has happened. I’ve moved, twice. I’ve aged (by which I mean I celebrated my birthday). I’ve taught an 8-week composition course for incoming Freshman athletes (11 football players and 3 hockey players). And tonight, in about 30 minutes, I’m about…
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“Happy Geeks”: A Story by Steel Wagstaff, age 16
This past week I started teaching an introductory college composition course for a group of incoming UW student athletes. It’s a small group, just 14 male students, and most of the group are football players. For their second writing assignment, I gave them an essay that I wrote was I was around 16 years old…
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Eyewear (Rec Specs) and Professional Athletes
The weather has finally turned in Madison. It’s still fairly cool here, but the snow is long gone and the grass is back, and the ground is hard enough for running and cutting and all the other things you need to do to play soccer outdoors. Finally. This week has been the first time I’ve…
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The Last Thing To Go
I play basketball on Wednesday nights. Pick-up games, at a church building in Madison, five on five, really nice courts. So it’s on my mind today. I’ve played basketball ever since I was a kid. I’ve always been into sports, and have always liked playing them more than watching them. Commercials don’t help–I abhor them,…