Context: The audience for this data analysis report is the very general one. The assumed background is very little statistics but enough to know what a correlation, IQR and standard deviation are. I have not assumed that the reader has an understanding of hockey beyond a general understanding of sports. Additionally, the analysis here is a fairly straightforward choice since our interest is in the relationship between these two variables.
Data: whatsagoalworth.xlsx
In this analysis, we will be considering what is the value of a goal to a National Hockey League (NHL) team. The question of the worth of a goal is motivated by a desire to understand and evaluate goalie save percentages and the impact of those percentages on team performance. In the NHL, teams receive points for winning games. Two points are awarded for a team that wins a game in regulation or overtime or by shootout. One point is awarded for teams that lose in overtime or by shootout. A team wins a game by scoring more goals than their opponent. The data that we will analyze here are those for all NHL teams from the previous three completed seasons (the 2007-8, 2008-9, 2009-10 seasons). For each team and each season we have the total number of points that each team earned and the goal differential. Goal differential is found by taken the total number of goals that each team scored minus the number of goals that there opponent scored. The aim of this analysis is to determine the relationship between these two variables.
