Statistics, which can be
applied to many fields
including sports analytics

The arrival of an Internet society with an advanced level of informatization has enabled the utilization of big data and open data in the present day.
Data science (applied statistics) is taking great leaps forward as an academic field through the emergence of massive data and new theories.
Its potential is not limited to the world of academia, but spreads to cover sectors such as sports, business, disaster prevention, and social security policy.
Professor Tomoyuki Furutani stresses that these data science trends have the power to revolutionize society itself.

  Data science changes social rules

My field of specialty is applied statistics, which has become widely known among the general public as the term “data science” in recent years. Data science is an academic field with the aim of applying collected and analyzed data to decision-making processes based on evidence. With the arrival of the Internet society, it has become possible to utilize unprecedented massive and complicated collections of data known as “big data.” It has also become possible to utilize data held by public offices and corporations in the form of open data. As a result, data science is becoming even more familiar and accessible to society.

On the other hand, data analysis methods have undergone innovative changes as we stepped into the 21st century, making it a major turning point for data science. One of these is Bayesian statistics, a method that involves capturing the empirical value arising as a consequence of factors as a probability, and calculating the probability of obtaining the same result when other factors occur. The second is spatio-temporal statistics, which uses data related to space and time to predict statistical trends and future.

Until the 20th century, the study of statistics was an academic field that involved the skillful handling of limited data on an extremely small scale, and combining that with theoretical statistics, which involves conducting an analysis corresponding to the theories. However, data science in the 21st century is becoming a field that predicts the future based on massive data, which can possibly change business, sports, and social rules.

  Sports analytics – an area commanding the greatest attention today

Among the research fields that deal with data science, sports analytics is the area that I would like to inject particular effort into in the future. Firstly, with regard to sporting events, I collect and analyze data, including information pertaining to the movements of athletes in the sports arena, analyze tactics that are more efficient for the team and individual as well as the performance efficiency, and provide athletes with feedback. Specific activities that I have undertaken so far include an analysis of Spain’s representative soccer team, and an analysis of the performance of professional Japanese tennis players.

The data collected and analyzed in sports analytics not only contributes to improving the performance of athletes and teams, but is also applied widely in the sports business. For example in the United States, in various sporting events such as baseball and football, when the team manager decides on the salary of athletes, the decision is based on analytical data of the athletes’ performance obtained through sports analytics.

Furthermore, sports analytics is also required to play the role of contributing to the expansion of the sports business by exploring the needs of fans and sponsors, through the collection and analysis of data.

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• Sports analytics, which collects, analyzes, and predicts sports-related data and feeds it back to analysts, managers, and fans, have immense potential.

  Making SFC the future base for sports analytics

The research target for sports analytics is not limited to professional sports. In research in the field of amateur sports, I have approached groups such as the Keio University Athletic Association, and am involved in the development of athletes in the Rugby Football Club in cooperation with Keio Senior High School and Keio University.

Specifically, using video tracking systems, I record and collect event data, such as the position of athletes during training and competitions, and who made passes at which locations to which other players during a match. The results of the analysis are fedback to coaches and athletes.

In addition, I am also carrying out follow-up research as to how the performance of members of the club improves when they enter Keio University and join the Rugby Football club.

Overseas, the profession of sports analyst, who provides support for professional sports athletes and teams with sports analytics based on data science, has already been established mainly in countries such as the United States, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. On the other hand, Japan has not yet reached the stage where sports analyst is regarded as an established profession. In the future, the development of sports analysts poses a significant challenge for Japan. I hope to play an active role in undertaking activities to establish SFC (Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus) as a hub for sports analysts.

At Tomoyuki Furutani research laboratory, students practice data analysis methods and make presentations on the progress of their fieldwork. Most of the activities are conducted as group work, and importance is placed on communication between the students.

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