Okay, so, today was another one of those days where I was just messing around with football data, and the match I looked into was Alavés versus Valladolid. I’ve been trying to get better at tracking these things, so I figured, why not dive deep into this one?
I started by gathering all the info I could on the match. It was a bit of a hassle, you know, finding reliable sources, but I managed. I dug up the lineups, who played, who didn’t, all that jazz. Then I moved on to the fun stuff – the actual match stats.
- Shots on target
- Possession percentages
- Fouls committed
- Yellow cards
- Red cards
- Passes completed
I wrote down everything I could find. It took a while because, let me tell you, there are a lot of different numbers you can look at in a football match!
After I had all the numbers, I started putting them into my spreadsheet. This is where it got a little tricky. I had to make sure everything was organized right so I could actually make sense of it later. I had different columns for each stat, and I made sure to double-check everything to avoid any mistakes.
Once I had my spreadsheet all set up, I started playing around with the data. I tried out a few different charts to see what the numbers would look like visually. I did a couple of bar graphs for the shots on target and possession, and a pie chart to show the distribution of fouls. It’s always interesting to see the data come to life like that. It’s way easier to understand what happened in the match when you can see it visually.
Finally, after all that, I just looked at the overall picture. What did the data tell me about how the match went? Who dominated? Were there any surprises? I jotted down some notes based on what I saw. It’s all about getting a feel for the game through the numbers, you know? It’s not just about the final score.
So, yeah, that’s pretty much how I spent my day digging into the Alavés versus Valladolid match. It’s a bit of a grind, but I find it kind of fun, in a weird way. Plus, I’m getting better at this whole data analysis thing, so that’s a bonus.
Learnings
I used to record the game information randomly. For example, I just wrote down the game data on paper. I never thought about the importance of categorizing and organizing the data until today.
Today I record the data in a spreadsheet. It helps me a lot. I believe in the future, I can do better and better in organizing data, so I will have more insights from the data.