Installing R, RStudio, and sportyR
(This section courtesy of Saiem Gilani. Give him a
follow!)
- Head to https://cran.r-project.org
- Select the appropriate link for your operating system (Windows, Mac
OS X, or Linux)
- Windows - Select base and download the most recent
version
- Mac OS X - Select Latest Release, but check to make
sure your OS is the correct version. Look through Binaries for Legacy OS
X Systems if you are on an older release
- Linux - Select the appropriate distro and follow
the installation instructions
- Head to RStudio.com
- Follow the associated download and installation instructions for
RStudio.
- Start peering over the RStudio
IDE Cheatsheet. An IDE is an integrated development
environment.
- For Windows users: I recommend you install Rtools. This
is not an R package! It is “a collection of resources for building
packages for R under Microsoft Windows, or for building R itself”. Go to
https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/ and
follow the directions for installation.
sportyR is live on CRAN, and the most recent release can
be installed by running:
# Install released version from CRAN
install.packages("sportyR")
If you’re more into the development version of the package, try
this:
# Install development version from GitHub
devtools::install_github("sportsdataverse/sportyR")
Once the library is installed, be sure to load it into the working
environment.
# Required to use package
library(sportyR)
Understanding and Exploring the Package
The package itself is really an extension of ggplot2, but the
aim is to focus specifically on a sports playing surface. So that begs
the question: what sports can we plot using sportyR?
You’re in luck: these kinds of questions are natively answered by
what I’ve called the cani_{question}() family of functions.
They’re designed to answer questions like
Can I plot a soccer pitch?
or
Can I plot a PHF ice rink?
and that’s the exact syntax you can follow to have the package answer
those questions. Here’s an example:
# Find out if you can plot a soccer pitch
cani_plot_sport("soccer")
#> geom_soccer() can be used to plot for the following leagues: EPL, FIFA, MLS, NCAA, NWSL
or
# See if a league comes pre-packaged with sportyR
cani_plot_league("PHF")
#> A plot for PHF can be created via the geom_hockey() function
I’ll highlight the fact that these are
case-insensitive searches. Ask away to your heart’s
content!
There’s one other cani_{question}() function I’ll
highlight more in a bit, but first let’s start acting on the answers to
these kinds of questions.
The geom_{sport}() Functions
Now that we can ask questions to the package and get answers, let’s
start using this information to make plots. Say for example we’re
interested in drawing a regulation NBA
basketball court. sportyR seeks to make this as easy as
possible:
# Draw a regulation NBA basketball court
geom_basketball("nba")
Easy as that to get started. Here’s a quick overview of the arguments
(which are included for all of the geom_{sport}()
functions):
league: This is a required parameter, but
custom is a viable value for any sport. As a quick note,
using this custom option will require you to specify all
parameters of the surface you’re looking to create. This is
case-insensitive
display_range: This automatically “zooms” in on the
area of the plot you’re interested in. Valid ranges here vary by sport,
but can be found by calling ?geom_{sport} and reading about
the display ranges
x_trans and y_trans: By default, the
origin of the coordinate system always lies at the center of
the plot. For example, (0, 0) on a basketball court lies
along the division line and on the line that connects the center of each
basket. If you want to shift the origin (and therefore the entire plot),
use x_trans and y_trans to do so
{surface_type}_updates: A list of updates to the
parameters that define the surface. I’ll demo how to use this to change
a hockey rink in a different vignette, but I’ll call this out
here
color_updates: A list that contains updates to the
features’ colors on the plot. These are named by what the feature is,
using snake_case to specify the names. To get the list of
color names you can change, try running
cani_color_league_features() with your desired
league
rotation: An angle (in degrees) that you’d like to
rotate the plot by, where +is counterclockwise
xlims and ylims: Any limits you’d like
to put on the plot in the x and y direction. These will overwrite
anything set by the display_range parameter
{surface}_units: If your data is in units that are
different than how the rule book of the league specifies the units
(e.g. you’ve got NHL data in inches, but the rule book describes the
rink in feet), change this parameter to match the units you’ve got your
data in. You’re welcome to change the units of the data as well, but
this is provided for convenience
