Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for Clown Cast
Clown Cast · Yesterday · 14 min

Desire Paths: Learning Before You Know

Joey finds advice from a WNBA analytics writer: learn from college syllabi instead of bootcamps. When he opens them up, he realizes his independent research on beach volleyball blocking already covers most of what these courses teach. The episode explores desire paths—how repeated use creates trails that eventually get paved into official routes. 00:00:00 - How it started: Joey encounters the advice 00:01:40 - Desire paths in landscape architecture 00:05:17 - The volleyball analytics assignment at Rice 00:06:52 - Michael Lopez's Statistics in Sports course 00:08:28 - The syllabus, books, and the research series 00:10:10 - When footpath and pavement align --- Sources & further reading: • Scott Powers — SMGT 430/530 Introduction to Sport Analytics (Rice), course page: https://saberpowers.com/teaching/smgt430 • Scott Powers — SMGT 430 syllabus, Spring 2026: https://saberpowers.com/teaching/smgt430/syllabus/latest.pdf • Scott Powers — SMGT 430 final project assignment: https://saberpowers.com/teaching/smgt430/assignment/project.pdf • Brady Detwiler and Scott Powers — The Big Dig (volleyball assignment): https://saberpowers.com/teaching/smgt430/assignment/the_big_dig.pdf • Sameer Deshpande — STAT 479 Sports Analytics, Fall 2025: https://skdeshpande91.github.io/stat479_fall2025 • Sameer Deshpande — STAT 479 Project 1: https://skdeshpande91.github.io/stat479_fall2025/project1.html • Sameer Deshpande — STAT 479 syllabus: https://skdeshpande91.github.io/stat479_fall2025/syllabus.html • Michael Lopez — Statistics in Sports (Skidmore MA 251) repo: https://github.com/statsbylopez/StatsSports • Winston, Nestler, Pelechrinis — Mathletics, 2nd ed. (Princeton UP, 2022): https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691177625/mathletics • Roback and Legler — Beyond Multiple Linear Regression: https://bookdown.org/roback/bookdown-BeyondMLR/ • Wickham, Çetinkaya-Rundel, Grolemund — R for Data Science (2e): https://r4ds.hadley.nz • SportsDataverse — GitHub organization: https://github.com/SportsDataverse This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

0:00-14:39
Play in

transcript

No transcript — this publisher did not publish one.

show notes

Joey finds advice from a WNBA analytics writer: learn from college syllabi instead of bootcamps. When he opens them up, he realizes his independent research on beach volleyball blocking already covers most of what these courses teach. The episode explores desire paths—how repeated use creates trails that eventually get paved into official routes.

00:00:00 - How it started: Joey encounters the advice
00:01:40 - Desire paths in landscape architecture
00:05:17 - The volleyball analytics assignment at Rice
00:06:52 - Michael Lopez's Statistics in Sports course
00:08:28 - The syllabus, books, and the research series
00:10:10 - When footpath and pavement align

---
Sources & further reading:
• Scott Powers — SMGT 430/530 Introduction to Sport Analytics (Rice), course page: https://saberpowers.com/teaching/smgt430
• Scott Powers — SMGT 430 syllabus, Spring 2026: https://saberpowers.com/teaching/smgt430/syllabus/latest.pdf
• Scott Powers — SMGT 430 final project assignment: https://saberpowers.com/teaching/smgt430/assignment/project.pdf
• Brady Detwiler and Scott Powers — The Big Dig (volleyball assignment): https://saberpowers.com/teaching/smgt430/assignment/the_big_dig.pdf
• Sameer Deshpande — STAT 479 Sports Analytics, Fall 2025: https://skdeshpande91.github.io/stat479_fall2025
• Sameer Deshpande — STAT 479 Project 1: https://skdeshpande91.github.io/stat479_fall2025/project1.html
• Sameer Deshpande — STAT 479 syllabus: https://skdeshpande91.github.io/stat479_fall2025/syllabus.html
• Michael Lopez — Statistics in Sports (Skidmore MA 251) repo: https://github.com/statsbylopez/StatsSports
• Winston, Nestler, Pelechrinis — Mathletics, 2nd ed. (Princeton UP, 2022): https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691177625/mathletics
• Roback and Legler — Beyond Multiple Linear Regression: https://bookdown.org/roback/bookdown-BeyondMLR/
• Wickham, Çetinkaya-Rundel, Grolemund — R for Data Science (2e): https://r4ds.hadley.nz
• SportsDataverse — GitHub organization: https://github.com/SportsDataverse

This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

more episodes

All episodes