Adding Median Salaries to Player Card (and some other stuff)

Hey Niv,

We’re almost there… had a few ideas for wishlist items and figured I’d ask you about them before things get super hectic (or before I forget!)

  1. Median Prices: is it possible to display a player’s median value (in addition to average)?

  2. Last 10: is it possible to get a link to see the actual, individual last-10 add values (or add median values here as well)?

  3. Notebook: I’m using the notebook a lot in draft-prep, it’s a convenient tool. As such, I must scroll beyond my long list of notes before seeing my roster. Two ideas for the price of one, not mutually exclusive: can notes be moved to display below the roster, and is it possible to add an expand/collapse function to the notebook box?

As always I hope these are good and productive thoughts; as always, thanks for running Ottoneu and for your attention to my ideas.

~MLB

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Please make separate wishlist posts instead of merging every idea into one. It’s harder to track this and respond to when its all one post and I don’t know what parts of your suggestions people actually want to see (i.e. what is doorbot giving a thumbs up to? All 3 requests? Just one of them?)

I tried splitting this up but have failed so I’ll try to address this stuff here but for future note: don’t worry about having too many separate topics! It’s really really helpful for me and I encourage it. Having everything under one topic is not as helpful.

All that being said:

1&2: It looks like our DB server does allow for pulling medians (this was not always true) so I will see if it makes sense to add them in.

3: Having the team notebook have a max height after which you need to manually expand and can contract makes a ton of sense, esp given how you seem to be using it. I’ll check into it.

I’ll just spell out my thumbs up, heh. I liked the first and third ideas. The second felt a little unnecessary if median is provided—since the data there is just to get a general idea. Of course, median for last ten would also be cool, so maybe my thumbs up was all encompassing.

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Helpful, thank you. I’m doing some weird DB digging today due to accents so maybe I’ll do some median digging as well.

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In unpacking median salaries a bit:

I think it would be helpful to expressly state what the goal of adding median salary data is, or what the underlying problem is that is solved by median salary data.

Do you want these instead of average salaries or are both together the best way to paint the complete picture? It may make sense to move towards median in general for that number, because it avoids the outliers that we all know are lurking out there, but this is contingent on the underlying problem that is trying to be solved (which maybe is as simple as “avoiding outliers” but then do we need average as well?)

Both together has the downside of taking up a lot of real estate (especially on mobile) but I’m sure I can come up with a solution if it seems like the right answer to the problem.

#3 is something I’ve encountered. The proposed solution (“Having the team notebook have a max height after which you need to manually expand”) would be great!

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No problem- yes I was worried about having too many separate topics, but if that’s better for you then it’s better for me. Will do going forward!

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Thanks!

Median Salaries: Niv you said it, “average” doesn’t translate the presence of outliers in a way that is actionable, and rather misrepresents the heart of price trends. I wouldn’t want to call this an underlying problem (that seems a little harsh!), rather Median is simply a more precise figure than Average for the reason mentioned. In a perfect world I’d like to see both, Average still has utility especially in relation to a median (the comparison makes trends more readily apparent from a quick glance at the two figures juxtaposed), but as you said there is a real estate issue. Nevertheless, Median tends to be the statisticians preferred value for getting at the heart of an expected value.

Now, as for trend-watching, you have given us plenty of that elsewhere. The reason I brought forth the question about the last-10 is because it’s so hard to know if those 10-adds were drafts, new drafts, waiver claims, or free agents, there’s just such a difference in context that last 10 itself may be misleading at times. This is a true “wish” list item in that I think it’s still in the harder-to-justify, seemingly-cosmetic set of requests people may have… that said, it would be super cool to be able to see the actual last-10 in the same way that we get that the stock-ticker at the homepage is cool.

Happy to keep the discussion going, or to add more context if you would like, whatever is helpful and productive.

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The Notebook functionality seems straightforward enough and a relatively simple request to justify and implement. I should’ve put this in a separate thread for sure. Anyway even just placing it below the rosters would solve much of the problem, and/or adding the +/- feature would make it airtight.

I love the notes and their location. My thought is that if you have to scroll down to see the roster then you may have more than a note and more of a novel. Just my two cents but I’m not seeing a problem with the notes location and I’m hoping they stay in the space.

My initial plan is to keep team notes where they are on team pages and allow them to be expanded / collapsed if they are over a certain length. I’ll be experimenting with that through this week and hopefully have an update soon specifically on that.

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That would definitely be a welcome update. Thanks for looking into it, and keeping us posted, as always.

Regarding very long team and player notes:

These are now collapsed by default and can be expanded and collapsed again by clicking the Expand/Collapse link.

Their location has not changed on any of the pages they were on before, other than your team notes now show up on your roster organizer.

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Excellent! Very cool, didn’t even think about adding this to the organizer, all around great updates. Thank you Niv!

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Today I’ve added median salary to a number of places:

  1. Player pages, using a new tab system that lets you flip between Overall aggregate salary and Last 10 aggregate salary
  2. Search results
  3. Average Values page, including exports

This change will break the Surplus Calculator, but @vibbot is aware and should be publishing an update shortly.

UPDATE 9:08am: The Average Values page medians seem a little off, but search and player pages both seem correct. I’m investigating.

FYI I have updated the master version of the Surplus Calculator, so making a new copy of the Sheet will resolve the issue.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-gNtDx7LC5iA5KRLgGRup1gChK9OFSUn_kj4r8VW2AE/copy

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Thanks Niv. Some of these numbers look a little off though. Acuna with a median of $11? Soto at $7?

Those are from the avg. salaries page, but it looks like the figures are correct ($57, $50) on player pages.

I mean.