In my latest blog post, I share a variety of fascinating reads. From tips on owning your onboarding from an Apple engineer to an analysis of football trends, and even a deep dive into college football playoff selections using Elo ratings. Plus, insights into AI’s impact on research and debunking lawn misinformation! Dive in for all the details!

• 7 Tips to Crush Your Onboarding from An Apple Staff Engineer: Guest post by Staff Engineer at Apple, Akash Mukherjee
• How Football Is Changing: The StatsBomb Data Science team explain how the game has evolved in recent years, showing trends in passing, dribbling, aerial duels and more
• An analysis of the NCAA college football playoff team selections using an Elo ratings model: In December 2023 the Florida State Seminoles became the first Power 5 school to have an undefeated season and miss selection for the College Football Playoff. In order to assess this decision, we employed an Elo ratings model to rank the teams and found that the selection committee’s decision was justified and that Florida State were not one of the four best teams in college football in that season (ranking only 11th!). We extended this analysis to all other years of the CFP and found that the top four teams by Elo ratings differ greatly from the four teams selected in almost every year of the CFP’s existence. Furthermore, we found that there have been more egregious non-selections including when Alabama was ranked first by Elo ratings in 2022 and were not selected. The analysis suggests that the current criteria are too subjective and a ratings model should be implemented to provide transparency for the sport, its teams, and its fans.
• Four Singularities for Research: The rise of AI is creating both crisis and opportunity
• Can we Stop the Misinformation about Lawns? Lessons from my College Lawn Class: UMD lawn course counters anti-lawn misinformation – that lawns have no benefits and must be harmfully managed.