ll I could see was an ocean of decimal points, trailing digits, and hundreds of XML tags sporadically interleaved among them. Right away, it was obvious this was the “biggest” data I had ever seen. I’ll always remember my surprise when it occurred to me that everything on my screen amounted to only a few seconds of player action from one quarter of one game.

If we can estimate the EPV of any moment of any given game, we can start to quantify performance in a more sophisticated way. We can derive the “value” of things like entry passes, dribble drives, and double-teams. We can more accurately quantify which pick-and-roll defenses work best against certain teams and players. By extracting and analyzing the game’s elementary acts, we can isolate which little pieces of basketball strategy are more or less effective, and which players are best at executing them.

For years, we have talked about “advanced stats” when what we were really talking about was slightly savvier arithmetic. That’s going to change, whether we want it to or not.

help fan students’ intrinsic motivation, leading them to embrace learning rather than grades

A year-long project is one in which students set a long-term goal and work backwards, creating checkpoints that the teacher can set.

goal of 2,500 books read by June. This averages to roughly 25 per student. Of course, some will read 50 while a few will read 15. Along the way, we learn genre, book structure, literary elements and the fundamentals of writing.

There is a place for data, but it can be overrated

We look, we listen, we give regular quizzes and tests to see what a child has retained. We confer with children, we ask them what will interest them, what will make them tick and want to keep working hard at school,