Final Project Proposal
Data Critique
The two datasets I will be using for this project are rosters from the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball five years after integration. The datasets primarily come from information from websites associated with sports reference. I was able to create datasets using this information to include information like the name of the player, age of the player, where they are from, what team they played on, and most importantly for this project their race. This includes data for each team from each league. As this dataset was made by me, I’m still considering adding more data if I find something else I want to explore with this project.
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One Comment
Maeve Kane
For the final write up, you’re going to need to do an extensive methods section on what data you collected, how, and from where, with full Chicago style citations. You also need full citations for your bibliography here and in the final product. The bibliography here is very sloppy.
Some of your broader questions are probably answered in the secondary literature of the history of sports, eg what percent of each league was black, how many other minorities were represented and when. The footnotes in Snyder, Tygiel and Stark should lead you to other works and you’ll need to do a context section on what work has already been done in this area.
Since there’s been so much traditional work done in this area, you’re going to have a stronger project by focusing on a few teams in depth with eg your question about regional differences. As mentioned in class, depth and detail on a few teams will be more interesting than a broad, shallow focus on many teams.
MLB especially has had a number of non-US born, non-white players, so make sure to differentiate between players of African descent born in the US and elsewhere, since those communities have different experiences of race.