Senior Project Day 7

Excel is probably my new best friend right now. While I prefer and continue to write a lot of the calculations by hand, Excel has aided me in deciding where I start my own calculations of a player's decline. By just looking at a data table, its hard to determine where exactly the decline of a player begins, or where their prime years are. Some players, like Ted Williams, make it even harder due to the fact that their playing career was interrupted by military service, where most of their supposed "prime" was spent. Thus, it leaves me with data that has weird trends. Also, I also have to consider injuries as well, as I've left off some years of certain players in my calculations because they did not play full seasons some years. So far, I've been comparing declining years versus prime years of the greats, making sure I picked players long before the steroid era. I realized, however, a flaw in my thought process, as I was comparing declining years to the rest of the career when I actually wanted decline vs. peak. Been trying to play around with excel and learn about regression at the same time, though it has been a bit confusing since I've never taken a stats class before. Looking forward to talking to Ms. Ferrara this week in order to discuss how to process and analyze the data I've been given and make good projections/forecasts.