![]() ![]() “I realized that while I was making progress, it was probably a lot slower than if I pursued an actual program with instructors and peers that were in the same boat as me.”ĭeterred by the time it would take to pursue a traditional Master’s degree, and “excited for the opportunity to be part of a community where people really understood the type of skills I was looking for,” So bounced to San Francisco and focused on sharpening his data science skills at Galvanize.Īnthony So leveled up his skills and landed his dream job with the Phoenix Suns. He first tried to hone his data science game by taking online courses. “I figured if I could level up my skills, I could provide a lot of value to teams that are looking for people with this skill set,” said So. Then he came across a job posting looking for candidates capable of performing data analysis on basketball-related issues. Path of champions mind meld free#In his free time, he created his own data sets to evaluate basketball players the way he assessed portfolio holdings, and blogged his analyses. “I saw how valuable data science was to solving the problems that portfolio managers were considering,” says So. Despite having no business experience and a steep learning curve, So forged himself into a financial analyst at Delaware-based asset management company BlackRock, providing data and risk analytics to portfolio managers, along with insight into how their funds were performing. He finished his degree and promptly pivoted to the world of finance. “I attempted to predict when the next record would be set, or by how much a record would be broken.” “This was back when Usain Bolt and Olympic swimmers were setting records at the 2008 Summer Games in China,” So says. He longed to explore other topics, to take shots at “applying my skills and analytical mindset toward another industry.” He channeled some of his curiosity into his senior thesis, The Limits of Human Athletics. So wasn’t passionate about bioengineering, and he felt hemmed in by the rigidity of the program. “It sounded really appealing,” he recalls, “because it combined two things I’m really good at – math and science.” ![]() Path of champions mind meld pro#Since playing college ball wasn’t in the cards for So, and a data-driven “Moneyball” approach to pro sports wasn’t yet a thing, he studied bioengineering at UPenn. He would pull the sports section from his parents’ newspaper and comb through the box scores, comparing the names and numbers to the ones on his NBA trading cards. ![]() As a kid, even more than playing hoops and rooting for the Sixers, So was drawn to the stats. ![]() He’s always been a sports fan, but basketball is his bae. The 30 year-old is a Jersey boy, raised about 30 minutes east of Philadelphia. So has come a long way from his college days, when he was toiling in a bioengineering lab and questioning his career path. And then there are the perks, like being flown to last month’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference to mind-meld with other athletic data champions and soak up insight from statistics guru Nate Silver. The difference is, in most industries, after a long day of mining data, analysts don’t “step out of the office and into the game” the way So and his colleagues do at Talking Stick Resort Arena.Īs a Basketball Analytics Analyst for the Phoenix Suns, So uses his data science know-how to help give his team a winning advantage. In Anthony So’s case, he’s got mad game…data science game - arguably, the hottest skills in the business world today. “He’s got game” usually refers to someone’s athletic skills or romantic swagger. Read his inspiring story of reaching his dream to work in the NBA through the use of data science. Kids all around the country gravitate to the parks, YMCAs and school gyms to shoot hoops and pursue their dream to play in the NBA. For Anthony So, the realism of playing with Kobe was not in his future, but the ability to work near the “go-to” guys became a possibility. ![]()
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