2,893 Inspirational Passion Project Ideas

Turn inspirations into your passion project.

This collection of project ideas, shared by Polygence mentors, is meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Check out some projects

NBA Analysis Using Tableau/PowerBI

Loading and cleaning data in either platform and working through the different steps to visualize the data such as who leads the leagues in assist, points, top scorers of each position etc..

Sports Analytics, Business, Organizational Leadership

Coty

Predicting NBA Contracts

Using NBA Salary data and statistics for players currently under contract to determine what a player facing free agency should be paid in free agency.

Computer Science, Sports Analytics

Has Economic Inequality Transformed Innovation?

Historically, innovation in the consumer goods space has led to two beneficial outcomes for consumers: (1) an improvement in product features and (2) a reduction in product prices. In this paper, we argue that the increased concentration of wealth over the last 50 years in the US has shifted the benefits of innovation away from (2) by disincentivizing firms from focusing on price reductions as a means to achieve growth. To support this argument, we use the profit pool model and analyze the available profit pool by price point for a selection of consumer goods and electronics.

History, Languages, Sports Analytics, Economics, Business

Joseph

Basketball Statistics Reporting Website.

Not interested in predictive modeling? cleaningtheglass.com is a great example of the the usefulness of a clean and important reporting tool. This project will be more heavily focused on the data engineering and gathering and front end visualization.

Sports Analytics, Statistics

Taylor

Whitespaces in Social Media

The world has come to love social media and all of its wonder. Today social media is still being understood at the most basic levels because it has only been around for a short amount of time. How do we use data to find whitespaces in the social media landscape to help grow a business. What strategies can be implemented and or tools used to increase engagement and hopefully profits.

Sports Analytics

cameron

NBA shot selection analysis using SportVU tracking data

The NBA releases an abundance of coordinate-based tracking data for each game. This project will make use of the 25 frames of data per second to not only identify when shots have been taken but also retrieve key information about the selection of shots by each team and player. The student will build an app to display shot charts and also potentially classify how smart a shot is based on metrics like score differential, shot distance, defender distance, shot clock usage, etc. This will help build a compelling analysis of what differentiates good shooters from smart shooters!

Computer Science, Sports Analytics, Quantitative, AI/ML

Sejal

Determining most impressive World Records between Track and Field Disciplines

Multiple world records exist in the sport of Track and Field as there exists disciplines such as javelin, shotput, high jump, 100 meter sprints, and 5000 meter races, among others. As the disciplines do not share commonalities, it is hard to determine if the current 400 meter record is more impressive than the shotput record, for example. An additional complication is that only the best few thousand results exist per discipline, so traditional statistical measures around averages and distributions cannot be run. The goal of this project is to determine a good method of approach to comparing statistical records.

Sports Analytics, Math, AI/ML, Statistics

Jeff

Marketing to Free Agents

One project idea that I have had since writing my senior thesis involves combining the business and performance side of sports. When a player hits free agency in any sport, teams and General Managers across the league throw money at the player in hopes that he or she will sign with their team. However, choosing a new team is a life-altering decision that incorporates more than just salary as we have seen all too often. The goal of this research would be to derive a sales and marketing strategy with which General Managers can approach free agents. Through determining which factors - including salary, city quality, cost of living, team quality, etc. - move the needle most for players, this strategy could effectively help teams market themselves to free agents and increase the likelihood of not only signing their desired players, but potentially signing them for a discounted price.

Sports Analytics, Economics, Business

Molly

Basketball Statistics Reporting Website.

Sports Analytics, Statistics

Taylor

Evaluating the Fairness of Large Language Models

This project could go in a wide variety of directions. However, the central concept here is to define certain language traits (eg: using "soda" vs using "pop") that are correlated with certain demographics. Then, we have the opportunity to analyze how good the responses from a large language model (eg: ChatGPT) are based on different language traits. Ultimately, we want to know if ChatGPT is biased towards certain traits.

Computer Science, Sports Analytics, Quantitative, AI/ML

Adi

Raised Banner: A Marketing Agency

This project will allow me to leverage my entrepreneurial mindset as well as my skills in technical business writing, strategic planning, and sales management. "Raised Banner" is a marketing agency that unapologetically aims to be the most innovative, inclusive, creative and efficient in the industry. The student will brainstorm ways to leverage data analytics, programming strategy, and content management to delivery powerful results for clients. The first order of business is securing clients which requires prospecting, public speaking, research, and sales management skills. Do you want to take your business skills to the next level and conduct yourself like an executive champion? Look no further than "Raised Banner."

Arts, Sports Analytics, Creative Writing, Social Science, Business

Raheem

Analyzing Pace-of-Play in Soccer using Spatio-Temporal Event Data

In this project, you will create and explore pace-of-play metrics in soccer and determine their effectiveness in predicting the outcome of a match. Through this process, you will learn to manipulate complex datasets, conduct spatio-temporal analysis and implement two different machine learning models. This project will culminate in a research paper or another method that displays the research results (i.e. Bookdown).

Sports Analytics, Statistics

Ethan

Finding Value in MLB Free Agency

Every offseason there are hundreds of professional baseball players who become free agents and can be signed by any team. This project involves determining which players might be a good "value" by deciding which statistics are most important to helping a team win relative to how players are generally paid. After deciding which stats are the most important, a ranked list of "value" can be produced based on expected salaries.

Sports Analytics, Economics, Math, Statistics

Dante

Evolving Landscape of Sports Audience and Viewership

Technology has brought on a swift change in the way fans consume sports. This project will uncover how many people consume sports (by sport) and how that has changed in recent years due to technology (and COVID). What are the business outcomes of such changes and where are the possible growth opportunities for firms / brands to invest.

Sports Analytics

cameron

Do companies see good stock price returns after Super Bowl ads?

Everyone knows to expect ads from companies like Coke, Doritos (owned by Pepsi), beer companies, insurance companies, and more, but when these companies put out "good ads" do they see more of a change in stock price than those that put out "bad ads"?

Sports Analytics

Joseph

Player Projection Model

538's RAPTOR and basketball index's PIPM are just two examples of predictive models that take in a players past and current performance to predict out how they will be in the coming years. Similar to the draft model, understanding which player's are on the verge of improving and which have the potential to decline is important for NBA front offices. This project will include data gathering and cleaning, predictive modeling with the potential to create an app based visualization to show results.

Sports Analytics, Statistics

Taylor

Creating a Shiny app for sport data

This is applicable to a wide variety of topics, but can involve web-scraping and data visualization techniques to display data in a dashboard.

Sports Analytics

Samual

Applying Artificial Intelligence to track sports players on film

Use object detection to track specific players while watching film to assist analyzing player habits and skills. Could build upon open source model and create application specific data.

Sports Analytics, AI/ML

Arnav

Player Projection Model

Sports Analytics, Statistics

Taylor

The Role of the Achilles Tendon in Basketball Players

A project like this one can take numerous forms: from analyzing data of Achilles tendon ruptures and how athletes recover after treatment, to trying to assess the relationship between Achilles length and basketball statistics like stride length, one-leg and two-leg vertical, etc. In the latter, we can study the anatomy of the Achilles tendon, the muscles that form it, and its role/function in various movements of the foot and as a supportive structure to other joints in the leg. A student and I can then explore the nature of Achilles tendinopathy (or injury to the Achilles tendon), Achilles tears, what Achilles surgery consists of and what the goals are (focusing on the integrity of the tendon and biomechanics of the repair), and then investigate how athletes perform (those who have injured/torn their Achilles tendons versus those that have not) and develop a very basic recommendation for how to, initially, prevent Achilles injuries and then, if the injury occurs, prognoses following an injury/treatment.

Surgery, Sports Analytics

Alan