Yesterday, I uploaded the records in my APBA Golf database* in the form of an Excel file to the Downloads area of this site. I did this to give others a chance to explore questions they might have about how APBA golfers perform.
Several of the blog posts here are based on that dataset. I will update the file on a monthly basis, so that more and more data becomes available over time.
You don’t need to be a GC user to work with or understand the data. I think the variable names are self-explanatory, but if you have questions, just let me know via a comment or email. You can work with this file “as is” or add your own records to it. I’d be delighted to post your findings here.
I don’t pretend to be a statistician–just a curious guy. (I suppose you could take that statement two ways!?) Some of you may be far more adept than I am at crunching numbers, and I welcome your advice and involvement.
Others may not know much about data analysis but have burning questions about APBA golf and its ability to simulate some aspect of the real world. Here’s your chance to raise those questions and possibly get some answers, even if you don’t have the know-how (or data) to find them yourself.
One project I am going to undertake next month is looking at the relationship between player card ratings (e.g., Average W/I, Momentum, Scramble) and performance. The first thing I need to do is to create a file that contains those ratings for the golfers in my database. It will also need to take into account that many of those golfers have different ratings for different years.
That’s going to take some time unless somebody out there has already taken on that project. Most of the records that are in my database come from the All-Time Greats set and the following seasons: 2016, 2019, 2020, and 2021. If this is something you’d like to help out with, let me know.
All you need is one of those card sets and Excel (or Access). If you have different card sets and want to help, that’s fine, too. There’s no reason why the file has to be limited to my dataset.
*My database was created using the GC and Game Caddie Record Book (GCRB). The file I’ve uploaded is a query from the GCRB: qryOrderedByHoleNoAll. In addition to showing the raw data for each hole played, this file assigns the par value to each hole and calculates the hole score relative to par.