{"id":647182,"date":"2013-03-17T13:00:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-17T17:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=621137"},"modified":"2013-03-17T13:00:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T17:00:06","slug":"statwing-wants-to-make-your-data-and-armchair-quarterback-dreams-come-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/647182","title":{"rendered":"Statwing wants to make your data \u2014 and armchair quarterback \u2014 dreams come true"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s nothing quite like getting settling into the couch on Sunday afternoon (or morning on west coast), cracking open a beer and yelling at a football coach who gets paid millions of dollars a year to do his job. After all, the guy\u2019s clearly an idiot. Who would run it up the middle on third down and eight? And why does the team still punt the ball all the time? You never punt in Madden NFL<\/em>, and you win all the time.<\/p>\n

You probably think I\u2019m being sarcastic, but I\u2019m not. Statistically speaking, football teams should go for it more often, they shouldn\u2019t run on third and long and they\u2019re almost certainly better off going for two-point conversions. The guys behind Statwing laid it all out in a blog post on Monday<\/a>. What\u2019s more, they\u2019ve uploaded an entire data set of NFL statistics to their service that users can play around with for free to analyze a huge number of occurrences and correlations.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a><\/p>\n

From the blog. One of countless analyses available with the data set.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s all about democratizing data<\/h2>\n

Statwing<\/a>, you might recall, is one of the \u201cdata for dummies\u201d tools<\/a> I highlighted in a January post about advanced analytics tools so simple anyone can use them. Right now, it\u2019s one of the simplest there is. Here\u2019s how I described Statwing then \u2014 although it actually performs more types of analyses:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYou upload data, check the variables you\u2019re concerned with, and it plots their relationship. (It also can describe the variables by highlighting the sample size, minimum, maximum, mean, median and standard deviation.) Graphs are accompanied by explanations as to how strong the correlation is based on various statistical metrics, as well as the results of a linear regression model.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Greg<\/a><\/p>\n

Greg Laughlin (courtesy of his Twitter profile).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The ease of use is by design, says Statwing co-founder Greg Laughlin. \u201cThere\u2019s a general zeitgeist that people should care about data now,\u201d he told me during a recent call, but they don\u2019t always know to get started or really even see how all the hype around data relates to them. Early on its existence, Statwing is trying to answer both of those concerns by building an easy-to-use service that also happens to teach users about statistics, and by offering up some interesting data sets for people to play around with.<\/p>\n

The latter part is easy, but valuable. Data sets like the NFL data or one about the Titanic\u2019s passengers let other people into the data game and get them thinking statistically. They get people saying, \u201c\u2018Oh, I grok that. I see how this interesting, I see how this is useful,\u2019\u201d Laughlin explained.<\/p>\n

Building a data-analysis service that\u2019s actually usable by mere mortals is a bit tougher. At its core, Statwing relies on a rules engine that considers the type of data uploaded and the types of variables (a maximum of two right now) a user wants to relate to each other. It can handle between 10 and 15 different analyses right now depending on how one defines them, Laughlin said, but at any rate they\u2019re the ones used most often.<\/p>\n

He credits Cloudera co-founder and Chief Scientist Jeff Hammerbacher (with whom, along with Greylock\u2019s DJ Patil, I\u2019ll be doing a fireside chat at Structure: Data<\/a> on Thursday) with helping Statwing decide to make the rules engine the service\u2019s core.<\/p>\n

That has been a wise decision because it lets lay users get what they need out of the service without worrying about the underlying functions. Statwing has users that never click the \u201cadvanced\u201d tab that shows the statistical breakdown, Laughlin said. They just use the service, essentially, as a faster way of making charts than using Microsoft Excel, and the headline stating whether or not there\u2019s a statistically significant relationship is all the info they need.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s really exciting for us,\u201d Laughlin said. \u201c\u2026 It\u2019s giving them the power of stats without them having to think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Just<\/a><\/p>\n

Just one view of how Statwing presents results.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Paying the bills with bigger users<\/h2>\n

Of course, a startup can\u2019t survive on free and unsophisticated users alone, so Statwing is ramping up its money-making efforts. For example, it has \u201cjust turned on the paywall in a really light way\u201d by \u201cmaybe\u201d charging really heavy users, Laughlin said. In the future, though, Statwing wants to add support for more variables and larger data sets (there\u2019s a 5MB limit right now), and perhaps build in some predictive analytics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat kind of analysis is really powerful, really extensible,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

As the service grows, Laughlin sees the ideal paying user being someone who currently has to use statistical-analysis software like SPSS or R, but who doesn\u2019t really go beyond the basic functions. That type of user has real business need for the software, he explained, but they don\u2019t need all the complexity and arcane statistics dressing that comes along with that that type of product.<\/p>\n

Some people don\u2019t want advanced analytics democratized, Laughlin added, because they think people can\u2019t ask the right questions. On the contrary, Statwing\u2019s theory is that most people just struggle with the logistics of cleaning and formatting data and then knowing the terminology associated with the business questions they want to ask.<\/p>\n

Back to football \u2026<\/h2>\n

But forget business users \u2014 when will football coaches start caring about statistics?! Maybe not any time soon. Laughlin said a friend of his who works on the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference sees a lot of interest in analytics from the higher levels in sports organizations, but noted that anecdotal evidence suggests most coaches aren\u2019t too interested in letting data influence their decisions too heavily.<\/p>\n

Think of a situation like fourth down and goal on the two-yard-line as akin to a CIO choosing between Oracle and some new whizbang database. Nobody ever got fired for buying Oracle, and nobody ever got fired for kicking a field goal.<\/p>\n

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