This weekend I played around with Neural Networks to see what I could learn. I decided to stick with number based applications, because they were easier to setup than word based applications. This lead me to test two things (both related to sports, because I was feeling sporting):

1. Predict the NBA MVP based on their stat line.

2. Given the scoring related stats of an NHL team predict whether the team makes the playoffs.

My first idea didn't really get too far off the ground. The game plan was to give the NN every stat line from players between 2005-2015, then see if it could predict the mvp from players stat lines between 1995-2004.

Yeah, the training data set was just over 6000 stat lines. And the network couldn't make heads or talls of the data.

After toying with it it would only say that LeBron James between the ages of 24 and 31 was the MVP (I'm not kidding). It also said that everyone else didn't win, even the ones I explicitly told were MVPs. The network was dumb.

So, with that experience I decided to try a data set that was a little more broad: NHL playoff berths. I fed this network the team stat line of every NHL team between 1999-2009, then see if it could predict the playoffs teams between 2010-2015. I did prune the stat line to remove all stats that were not goal scoring related; it would be a little easy to predict if a team makes the playoffs based on how many wins they had.

This was a lot more fruitful.

The final network I trained correctly guessed 75 out of 80 playoff teams in the NHL between 2010-2015. 93% accuracy(!).

And this margin of error is the product one reason: 16 teams make the playoffs each year, but this network does not take that into consideration. It can pick more or less that 16 teams; so, if a team does play well and makes it or does play well and doesn't make it the network will have an error.

Lets have some fun, here are the networks predictions for the 2016 NHL Playoffs (as of 1/27/2016; in no particular order):

1. Washington Capitals
2. Chicago Blackhawks
3. Dallas Stars
4. St. Louis Blues
5. Florida Panthers
6. L.A. Kings
7. New York Rangers
8. Tampa Bay Lighting
9. Colorado Avalanche
10. Boston Bruins
11. San Jose Sharks
12. Nashville Predators
13. New York Islanders
14. Minnesota Wild
15. Pittsburgh Penguins
16. Montreal Canadiens

(It predicted 16 teams, but 9 of those are Western Conference teams and each conference sends 8 teams to the playoffs... so)

If I get bored in the next few days I might do this for the other American sports leagues.