http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/3933/200904171820391280x1024.png This is a screenshot of what I have so far. Looking to expand upon it in a few ways. I want to be able to click each position and have it respond by having a list of all players pop up. When you click on the player you should be able to compare him to not only his previous years performance but other players at that position as well. This should be able to be done with everything from pass attempts to height and weight and everything in between. At the moment I'm learning as I go along and programming in Python. edit: the program is the position list on the right.
ive actually thought about learning python as its used alot in the video game industry it seems. where did you download the interpreter or compiler or whatever?
I found out that the NFL uses something called JSON http://www.json.org/ to keep track of the games while they're going on, the scoreboard at the top of the nfl.com website, and the week's 5 best in rushing, etc. I also found out that this is possible to implement in python. My program has actually reduced since before because I like to fry my operating system, but I think the acquisition of this knowledge will be incredibly beneficial to me in the near future.
I'm reading this book about programming in general. It says to make an outline of what the program will do before you even get to the coding, so today I did it.
Pretty cool stuff. be intersted in how you come along. Please update your progress. Pretty good idea BTW
will do. this page will serve as a journal of sorts. i'm just learning how to program so it could be a bit. i'm doing this for two reasons. one it will be able to serve me as an idea of what teams will be picking where (I got this idea back when i did the statistical report of the 2008 miami dolphins season a while back and suggested that based on the statistical info and age of players who we'd be drafting and it was pretty accurate). two the GM game we play in the offseason. i don't know if this will be written by then, but if it's not hopefully by the year after. It's going to be graphical, too, so it will be easier for others to manage.
You will need a bunch of different data structures. One for each conference. Within each of those, one for each division. Within that, one for each team. Within that, one for each player. Each player struct should have a variable to store each type of data. This will keep your data organized, making it easy to make the comparisons you're talking about. The most important part of this program is the organization of the data, and the proper input of data to the right places. If you can get the program to input all the data to the right spots from the PDF, then you can relatively easily code the comparisons and create your output with the conditional formatting your talked about. You first major goal should be to create a program that will read in the data from the PDF into the data structures you create. Then print each team's stats, and individual player stats. Don't worry about getting the end results until you get the core structure in place. If you want to learn more about data structures (struct in C), click here. You can google it for more tutorials and examples. Good luck.
Thanks I appreciate it a bunch. I've been looking into how to convert .PDF into something I can parse with Python, but I have had no luck so far. I guess I should create the data structures first, though. I just looked up implementing graphs in python and it looks like what I'll need. http://python.org/doc/essays/graphs.html so it would be something like "DIV, CONF, TEAM, PLAY" - do you mean player or position, btw?
I'm very interested in seeing how this works out. I'd be curious as to how accurate it is and how useful it would be come Draft day. Great idea Steve.
Thanks. As I posted a few replies up I got the idea from when I did the statistical guide to the miami dolphins 2008 season. I predicted which positions we might draft and based upon either the numbers or the ages of the players at those positions it was pretty accurate. How well that holds up over time is the question.
got a PHP book for christmas. i've had a localhost (web page) set up on my linux machine for quite some time. i've started putting in PHP scripts into it based off the book. i've got to figure out a good CMS that is PHP ready (i've looked into both Joomla! and Wordpress and both have to have special plugins to enable PHP scripting). I could use a simple white page, but I want the design to make it more visually appealing. I've tweaked what I want the program to be able to accomplish a bit.. just basically add to the previous bit that i want to be able to separate the teams into conference/division and be able to print out the stats via either. ie. Rushing by yards per game bengals (1st in DIV, 1st in AFC, 1st in NFL) at any rate .. celt (i think you're the webmaster?) do you know of any PHP ready CMS's? http://franticpeanutbutter.blogspot.com/2009/12/nfl-program-concept-pt1.html
