Using AFL to Broaden the Appeal of R and Stats Among Youth and Public

Our talk explores how sports analytics can be used to encourage those without a STEM background into the application of statistics and programming to a real world environment. Through the use of a R package (fitzRoy) related to AFL we aim to both lower the barrier to entry for data access while also increasing analytical fan engagement in AFL. We will also talk about common issues that arise for the first time R package builder.A key barrier to entry for the growth of the AFL community is data access which prevents not only people having a go at writing, but it also prevents current media having reproducible work. By having an R package with online lessons on creating common fan rating systems like ELO, Pythagorean and Massey this will engage people who otherwise might have put learning statistical modelling and R into their personal *this is too hard* bucket. Commonly users are taught from a cleaned dataset and jump straight into modelling. This misses a key part which is cleaning. Our package, we aim to use tangible examples of scraped, raw AFL data from afltables and footywire to teach users how to clean scraped data themselves to get it into a tidy format for modelling.