OVERVIEW

The teaching guides students toward a quantitative approach to understanding sports, both in relation to individual and team performance, and to sport as a social phenomenon.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The teaching provides students with the basic elements of sports data analysis by forming the knowledge and skills necessary to reorganize statistical information into simple reports using frequency tables, graphs and the main statistical summary indices. Particular attention will be given to the study of the relationship between variables, especially the concepts of correlation and linear regression. The proposed application contexts will be coherent with the sports field and will facilitate the transfer of the acquired competences to the students' chosen study path. In the last part of the teaching, some in-depth studies on probability calculation and statistical sampling useful to model the variability of sports results of teams or individual athletes will be proposed, also to account for some new professions in the sector, such as the ones of match analyst and technological scout.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The teaching follows a didactic path on descriptive and inferential statistics that caters to the educational interests of both those who have already taken basic statistics courses and those attending a statistics course for the first time. 

• Knowledge and Understanding: Adequate knowledge is acquired on quantitative analysis methods and the interpretation of the obtained results.
• Ability to Apply Knowledge and Understanding: The ability to independently apply the learned analysis methods to new data and to produce simple quantitative reports that can be useful in the decision-making process of public administration.
• Judgment Autonomy: Students are able to assess the quality of the available statistical data and choose the most appropriate analysis method based on their informational needs.
• Communication Skills: Students acquire the fundamental statistical vocabulary to communicate clearly and unambiguously with both specialist and non-specialist interlocutors.
• Learning Skills: Students will be able to further explore statistical methods for social sciences by applying them with the software used in class.

PREREQUISITES

None.

TEACHING METHODS

Lectures with in-class exercises.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

1. From data to information: statistics as a method
2. Sources of statistical information on sports
3. Describing data using tables, charts, and summary measures
4. Measures of association and correlation
5. Linear regression
6. Basics of probability and statistical inference
7. Principles of statistical surveys in sports: questionnaire design, modes of administration, sampling methods, market research
8. Statistics, sport, and society

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

di Bella E. (2025). Metodi statistici per gli sport. Giappichelli. Forthcoming.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

ENRICO DI BELLA (President)

LESSONS

LESSONS START

1st semester

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

The exam will be conducted exclusively in written form and in an open-book format. The test consists of three theoretical questions and three practical exercises.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The theoretical questions in the written exam are designed to assess students’ reasoning skills when faced with new problems, for which they are required to identify and propose an appropriate method of data analysis.

The written exam also evaluates the ability to solve simple practical problems based on the availability of real data, selecting the most suitable statistical techniques according to the nature of the data and the specific characteristics of the problem.

FURTHER INFORMATION

There are no variations in the program or assessment methods for non-attending students. However, these students are encouraged to contact their reference teacher.

Students with certification of Specific Learning Disorders (SLD), disabilities, or other special educational needs are advised to contact both the coordinator, Prof. Aristide Canepa (aristide.canepa@unige.it), and the course instructor at the beginning of the course to agree on teaching and examination methods that, while respecting the course objectives, take into account individual learning methods and provide suitable compensatory tools. For further information, please refer to the webpage: https://unige.it/disabilita-dsa/studenti-disabilità-informazioni-utili