PREDICTING WHICH POSITION AN NFL PLAYER SHOULD BE ON THE VIDEO GAME MADDEN. Forrest Lamp & Matt Nord

Research Objective: Predicting Your Players Position! In the video game Madden, gamers would like to know which position best fits a certain NFL player based on there physical attributes. By using two datasets from the Madden database and the Rapid Miner data mining program, we are able to predict which position each player is best at. We are using predictive analytics to build a model and a decision tree that gives us information as to how that position best suits a certain player.

Research Background We were interested to see if the position that an NFL player plays in real life is the best suitable position for them to play in the video game Madden. The dataset provides 48 different attributes that are used and analyzed to predict which position that specific player should be on the game. By looking at all of the players in the league, we will build a model and use the model to build a decision tree to learn more about the reasoning behind the position given.

Data Description: These datasets include information about all of the NFL players and their physical features including speed, agility, strength and many others attributes that relate to football. Number of Examples (Players): 1421 Number of Attributes: 48

Conclusions After creating the decision tree and applying the model to the dataset without positions, Rapid Miner gave us the attribute of play receiver as the first attribute to look at. From there it looks at different attributes and has splits for each attribute and a given rating to determine which position best suits that player. After looking at the model, we looked at each player and Rapid Miner gave us confidence levels for each position they may play. The majority of the time Rapid Miner is correct when predicting a player’s position. This could be beneficial though because if you are playing madden and your teams defensive end would be a better middle linebacker then it would help your team to move him. Madden is one of the most played video games and this analysis could be useful to millions of gamers.