Machine Learning and Baseball: A MIDS Capstone Project | Data Dialogs 2015

Zach Beaver, Jason Goodman, Josh Lu, & Alan Si
http://datadialogs.ischool.berkeley.e...

A good baseball hitter watches game film to pick up on the opposing pitcher's tendencies. The batter uses that information to predict what the pitcher will throw next. But few batters can do this as well as a computer that knows everything about every pitch the pitcher has ever thrown, and uses machine learning to figure out what he's likely to do next. In our MIDS capstone project, we attempted to build just such a system. In this talk, we'll present our project and the lessons we learned about data science in the process.

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Zach Beaver
Data Scientist
Elder Research, Inc.

Zach Beaver is a data scientist at Elder Research, Inc. in Washington DC, where he assists government agencies in leveraging their data to support better decision-making. His recent work includes fraud detection, developing methods to assess the credibility of home appraisals, and entity resolution. He is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley's Master of Information and Data Science program and holds degrees in Biology and Computer Science from Wofford College.

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Jason Goodman

Jason Goodman is a recent graduate of the UC Berkeley Master of Information and Data Science (MIDS) program. Prior to MIDS, he worked as a management consultant at Oliver Wyman, solving strategy problems for clients in the retail, pharmaceutical and financial services sectors. He holds a B.A. degree in Economics from Dartmouth College.

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Josh Lu
Tax Manager
Ernst and Young, Quantitative Services group

Josh Lu is a recent graduate of the UC Berkeley Master of Information and Data Science program. He is a CPA and works as Tax Manager in Ernst and Young's Quantitative Services group, specializing in research and development tax credits. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Accounting from Santa Clara University.

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Alan Si

Alan is a recent graduate of the UC Berkeley Master of Information and Data Science program. He previously worked for Upworthy as a Machine Learning Fellow and is currently a Data Scientist at Castlight Health where he focuses on improving User engagement and patient outcomes. He is originally from Canada and holds Bachelor degrees in Mechanical Engineering as well as Business Administration.