Unlike within the analytics community itself, there's no need to show your work; just offer up some simple sense, and that's good enough. Just make me smarter as a fan and more appreciative of the nuances of the game. I judged a research paper competition run by the conference; my favorite was a paper that compared NBA offensive strategy to driving your car in traffic. I got his point. I think that for next year, they should add a new category of essay: Explaining an advanced, interesting piece of analytics so that the average fan can get it. Frankly, there's an entire book in that for the conference if they can generate enough entries.
Dan Shanoff considers how to make sabermetrics more accessible to the casual sports fan as part of his Sloan Sports Analytics Conference recap.
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