My Story
My name is Kfir Shoham. I'm a student at Tenafly High School in New Jersey (Class of 2022), and here is my story. As a little kid, my family moved from Israel to California, back to Israel and then to North New Jersey. As part of my journey, I developed a passion for sports, especially for baseball (which I played at every stop and currently play for my High School Team), Tai Kwan Do (I am a Dan 2 black belt and have been studying for 10 years), football (I watch too much NFL), and basketball.
I also love mathematics and data, which I've learned from a variety of math classes as well as self-taught on my own and from online courses. I view the world through the lens of data and analytics. Combining my passion for sports and math was very natural for me, and you can always find me either watching sports, playing it and increasingly analyzing it via subjects like sports data analytics, sports statistics, sports data science and more.
Over the last year, I wanted to leverage this passion of mine to try to make some positive impact in the world. To make this process more meaningful, I reflected back on my life to find something that could both help students: something I would have wanted. I remembered that some of my Math classes weren't very interesting, and it hit me that Math was a very hard topic to teach because it is so abstract and students can lose interest fast. Also the problems and topics tended to be repetitive and somewhat boring. I had the insight that I could use my knowledge and passion for sports analytics to make Math exciting -- especially for kids that like sports more than math.
The idea behind the name (Simple Sports Analytics) is that understanding sports with math does not have to be difficult to access and learn. A secondary hope is that I can guide students interested in math and sports in the right direction to continue to explore this great topic.
My main challenge was that though I've seen teachers teach classes for many years, and I knew a lot about sports and sports analytics, I didn't know what goes into teaching and preparing a lesson. To accomplish this, I have been in touch with over two dozen math teachers across the US who have helped me approach understand what do teachers really need. They have also given me countless feedback to help me improve my lesson plans. I really hope the lessons suite for your needs and provide a benefit for your students.
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Please reach out to me at kfir@simplesportsanalytics.com with any comments, feedback or math/sports topics you would like to see addressed.
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Kfir Shoham