Categories and Correlations - Part 1

Continuing from Fantasy Basketball Introduction... (Please read that post first)

There are 9 categories and you need to pick which 5 to go for. Take a look at this graph showing the points and turnovers from last season for the top 150 fantasy players:

With the exception of Dirk Nowitzki, every player over 2,000 points averaged at least 2 turnovers per game. As you can see from the above graph (and already know from common basketball sense), the players that score a lot of points are also the players that turn the ball over the most. So for starters, if you decide to go for points, you can't go for turnovers. And if you want to make your team good at turnovers, then you can't also try to be good in points.

By the way, points and turnovers have a 0.84 correlation coefficient. If you do not know know what a correlation coefficient is, here's a link to the wikipedia article about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_coefficient

Unlike the strong correlation between points and turnovers, some pairs of the 9 fantasy categories have a strong relationship that can be used to our advantage. For example, here's a scatter plot showing the steals and assists for the top 150 fantasy players:

As you can see, there is a fairly strong positive correlation (As you already knew from basketball common sense). Players that get the most assists also tend to get the most steals.

To be continued...