Sabermetrics 101: Introduction to Baseball Analytics

I took this course to brush up on my SQL and learn R in an engaging manner. The advantages have easily outweighed the disadvantages for me, but I did go into more detail for my disadvantages so that you can have an understanding of the pitfalls to watch out for, and the parts of the program can use improvement.

**Advantages**
- Baseball aspect of the analysis makes it easy to forget that you are learning helpful analysis. Even a passing sports fan can see the potential for analysis and how data can lead down a fun path of important answers which lead to further questions and theories to test out.
- Piqued my interest in baseball
- Without knowing highlighting it, the course teaches you various
other aspects of Data Analysis that are directly related to less-interesting topics you may cover in a job.

**Disadvantages**
- SQL Sandbox has been deactivated, so you have to download MySQL (or if you'd like, SQL Server) to complete activities
- Emphasis on MySQL for the course. I use Microsoft's SQL Server for work and so I used the same for this course. First off, the Lahman Database upload is based off of MySQL files. They are not easily compatible with SQL Server I found out. After multiple frustrating hours of trying to port MySQL tables into SQL Server, a lightbulb went off in my head. I downloaded the Microsoft Access version of the Lahman Database and then used SQL Server's ability to convert Microsoft Access tables into SQL Server tables (I was using SQL Server Express 2014 fyi but it might work for older versions as well)
- Towards the 3rd-4th module, the TA start to phone it in. Not all, but some questions start to get worded in a confusing manner. Also, there is 1-2 instances where a question is asked based on knowledge that isn't revealed in a subsequent video... very frustrating when you don't grasp a topic, only to find out later that there was no way to know the answer based on what you've been taught so far. FWIW, there is a discussion portion of the page and so if I was stumped on a question, I can look at the discussion section and chances are that multiple people who took the course when it was first offered also had issues and voiced it in the discussion section.

Overall, I am about 70% finished at the moment. One other excellent resource for those interested in learning R in a fun way is to check out the 'swirl' package in R. It is an interactive program that teaches you various facets of R in an interactive way within R. The official website for the package is swirlstats.com