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The man behind the name John Harrell


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I had the opportunity to sit on the same computer that he had used at the Bloomington Herald-Times when I was there in 2014-15. He is a legend. He automated many processes in the late 1980s and 1990s via computer and we would occasionally have to call him in to "update" his old scripts for the newspaper.

His work in Java (.json and Regex) really taught me that not everything has to be complicated and served as my inspiration for the Predictor Tool.

He was going to introduce me to Jeff Sagarin, but we never had schedules which match up. Oh well, next time that I'm in Bloomington perhaps we'll be able to do it.

The IHSAA, coaches and officials' associations, principals, ADs and fans owe him more than the measley ad revenue he earns through the website. 

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5 hours ago, PLAC FAN said:

Just found his website it is awesome so is having good internet for the first time in my life

His website loads as fast in 1999 on dial-up in Paoli as it does today for me on high speed in Iraq. He is a machine who shows how persistence can pay off. Talk about legacy... 

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2 hours ago, Titan32 said:

Didn't even need PHP right Chris!

Ha, no (he is very vulnerable to data loss and I'd be interested to know what kinds of redudency he has built in both online and offline). And he did kind of cheat and get IU's computer science or statistics department to allow Jeff Sagarin to use their "supercomputers" in the 1980s to do basketball ratings in the 1980s which were published in the Bloomington paper and then picked up by The Star and others, eventually.

 

Sagarin won't fully reveal how he does his ratings because some are used directly or indirectly by companies and organizations like the NCAA, PGA Tour, USA Today, casinos, etc... Just as someone has written a book about Bill James, Jeff Sagarin's story needs to be told. Everything is proprietary (or based on other statistical work/proofs), but I'm not sure he makes much from it other than ad revenue, whatever books he has written, conferences spoken at etc...

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