Scraping Fantasy Football Projections from the Web

In this post, I show how to download fantasy football projections from the web using R.  In prior posts, I showed how to scrape projections from ESPN, CBS, NFL.com, and FantasyPros.  In this post, I compile the R scripts for scraping projections from these sites, in addition to the following sites: Accuscore, Fantasy Football Nerd, FantasySharks, FFtoday, Footballguys, FOX Sports, WalterFootball, and Yahoo.

Why Scrape Projections?

Scraping projections from multiple sources on the web allows us to automate importing the projections with a simple script.  Automation makes importing more efficient so we don’t have to manually download the projections whenever they’re updated.  Once we import all of the projections, there’s a lot we can do with them, like:

•    Determine who has the most accurate projections
•    Calculate projections for your league
•    Calculate players’ risk levels
•    Calculate players’ value over replacement
•    Identify sleepers
•    Calculate the highest value you should bid on a player in an auction draft
•    Draft the best starting lineup
•    Win your auction draft
•    Win your snake draft

The R Scripts

To scrape the projections from the websites, I use the readHTMLTable function from the XML package in R.  Here’s an example of how to scrape projections from FantasyPros:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8    

#Load libraries

library("XML")

#Download fantasy football projections from FantasyPros.com

qb_fp <- readHTMLTable("http://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/projections/qb.php", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)$data

rb_fp <- readHTMLTable("http://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/projections/rb.php", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)$data

wr_fp <- readHTMLTable("http://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/projections/wr.php", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)$data

te_fp <- readHTMLTable("http://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/projections/te.php", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)$data

view raw FantasyPros projections hosted with ? by GitHub

The R Scripts for scraping the different sources are located below:

1.    Accuscore
2.    CBS - Jamey Eisenberg
3.    CBS – Dave Richard
4.    CBS – Average
5.    ESPN
6.    Fantasy Football Nerd
7.    FantasyPros
8.    FantasySharks
9.    FFtoday
10.    Footballguys – David Dodds
11.    Footballguys – Bob Henry
12.    Footballguys – Maurile Tremblay
13.    Footballguys – Jason Wood
14.    FOX Sports
15.    NFL.com
16.    WalterFootball
17.    Yahoo

Density Plot

Below is a density plot of the projections from the different sources:Calculate projections

Conclusion

Scraping projections from the web is fast, easy, and automated with R.  Once you’ve downloaded the projections, there’s so much you can do with the data to help you win your league!  Let me know in the comments if there are other sources you want included (please provide a link).

Source:http://fantasyfootballanalytics.net/2014/06/scraping-fantasy-football-projections.html

Affordable Tooth Extractions

In recent times, the cost of dental care has skyrocketed. This includes all types of dentistry including teeth cleaning, extractions, and dental surgery. For those who live in Denver, CO, there are many options to choose from when paying for routine or emergency dental care. In fact, having a tooth extraction Denver might just be more easily afforded than what some may be aware of.

The flat fee for a tooth extraction in Denver may vary between dental offices. The type of extraction can also cause a difference in the price. A simple extraction may cost between $60-$75, but a wisdom tooth extraction that requires more time and effort could cost much more.

One of the great aspects of having dental services performed in Denver is the variety of payment forms that many dental offices accept. Most dental offices in this area accept several different health insurance plans that will allow patients to only be required to pay a small copay at the time of service. If you have chosen an in-network dental provider for your plan, this copay can be even less.

Many dental offices also provide services to those who have state medicaid or medicare as well. While cosmetic dental work may not be covered by these forms of health care, extractions are covered because they are considered a necessary part of the patients good health. Yearly checkups and teeth cleanings are also normally covered as a preventative measure to avoid bad dental health.

For those who may not have any type of health insurance, dental insurance, or state provided health care plan, most dental offices will offer a payment plan. The total cost will be calculated and can be divided up over a few months to make dental care more easily affordable. This will need to be arranged before services and you may need to pay a percentage of the cost upfront before any dental work is performed.

So, if you live in the Denver area and need to have a tooth extraction or other dental care, do not fear that it is impossible to obtain. By calling each dental office and discussing the types of payment forms they accept, you may find a payment plan that fits your budget nicely. You can compare the prices and options of all dentists in your area so that you can make a well informed decision more easily.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Affordable-Tooth-Extractions&id=3241427

Data Mining - Techniques and Process of Data Mining

Data mining as the name suggest is extracting informative data from a huge source of information. It is like segregating a drop from the ocean. Here a drop is the most important information essential for your business, and the ocean is the huge database built up by you.

Recognized in Business

Businesses have become too creative, by coming up with new patterns and trends and of behavior through data mining techniques or automated statistical analysis. Once the desired information is found from the huge database it could be used for various applications. If you want to get involved into other functions of your business you should take help of professional data mining services available in the industry

Data Collection

Data collection is the first step required towards a constructive data-mining program. Almost all businesses require collecting data. It is the process of finding important data essential for your business, filtering and preparing it for a data mining outsourcing process. For those who are already have experience to track customer data in a database management system, have probably achieved their destination.

Algorithm selection

You may select one or more data mining algorithms to resolve your problem. You already have database. You may experiment using several techniques. Your selection of algorithm depends upon the problem that you are want to resolve, the data collected, as well as the tools you possess.

Regression Technique

The most well-know and the oldest statistical technique utilized for data mining is regression. Using a numerical dataset, it then further develops a mathematical formula applicable to the data. Here taking your new data use it into existing mathematical formula developed by you and you will get a prediction of future behavior. Now knowing the use is not enough. You will have to learn about its limitations associated with it. This technique works best with continuous quantitative data as age, speed or weight. While working on categorical data as gender, name or color, where order is not significant it better to use another suitable technique.

Classification Technique

There is another technique, called classification analysis technique which is suitable for both, categorical data as well as a mix of categorical and numeric data. Compared to regression technique, classification technique can process a broader range of data, and therefore is popular. Here one can easily interpret output. Here you will get a decision tree requiring a series of binary decisions.

Our best wishes are with you for your endeavors.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining---Techniques-and-Process-of-Data-Mining&id=5302867

Do blog scraping sites violate the blog owner's copyright?

I noticed that my blog has been posted on one of these website scraping sites. This is the kind of site that has no original content, but just repeats or scrapes content others have written and does it to get some small amount of ad income from ads on the scraping site. In essence the scraping site is taking advantage of the content of the originating site in order to make a few dollars from people who go to the site looking for something else. Some of these websites prey on misspelling. If you accidentally misspell the name of an original site, you just may end up with one of these patently commercial scraping sites.

Google defines scraping as follows:

•    Sites that copy and republish content from other sites without adding any original content or value
•    Sites that copy content from other sites, modify it slightly (for example, by substituting synonyms or using automated techniques), and republish it
•    Sites that reproduce content feeds from other sites without providing some type of unique organization or benefit to the user

My question, as set out in the title to this post, is whether or not scraping is a violation of copyright. It turns out that the answer is likely very complicated.  You have to look at the definition of a scraping site very carefully. Let me give you some hypotheticals to show what I mean.

Let's suppose that I write a blog and put a link in my blog post to your blog. Does that link violate your copyright? I can't imagine that anyone would think that there was problem with linking to another website on the Web. In this case, there is no content from the originating site, just a link.

But let's carry the hypothetical a little further. What if I put a link to your site and quote some of your content? Does this violate copyright law? If you are acquainted with any of the terminology of copyright law; think fair use. The issue here is whether or not the "quoted" material is a substantial reproduction of the entire original content? I would have the opinion that duplicating an entire blog post either with or without attribution would be a violation of the originator's copyright.

So is the scraping website protected by the "fair use" doctrine? Does the fact that the motivation for listing the original websites is to make money have anything to do with how you would decide if there was or was not a violation of the originator's copyright? By the way, the copyright does not make a distinction between a commercial and non-commercial use of the original constituting or not constituting a violation of copyright. The fact that the reproducing (scraping) party does not make money from the reproduction is not a factor in the issue of violation, although it may ultimately be an issue as to the amount of damages assessed.

Does the fact that the actions of the scraper annoy me, make any difference? I would answer, not in the least. Whether or not you are annoyed by the violation of the copyright makes no difference as to whether or not there is a violation. Likewise, you have no independent claims for your wounded feelings because of the copied content. Copyright is a statutory action (i.e. based on statutory law) and unless the cause of action is recognized by the law, there is no cause of action. Now, in an outrageous case, you may have  some kind of tort (personal injury) claim, but that is way outside of my hypothetical situation.

So what is the answer? Does scraping violate the originator's copyright? If only a small portion of the blog is copied (scraped) then I would have to have the opinion that it is not. Essentially, no matter what the motivation of the scrapper, there is not enough content copied to violate the fair use doctrine. Now, that is my opinion. Your's might differ. That is what makes lawsuits.

Do I think there are other reasons why scraping websites are objectionable? Certainly, but those reasons have nothing to do with copyright and they are probably the subject of another different blog post. So, if you are reading this from scraping website, bear in mind that there may be a serious problem with that type of website.

Source:http://genealogysstar.blogspot.in/2013/05/do-blog-scraping-sites-violate-blog.html

Microfinance Data Scraping

I went to the Datakind‘s New York Datadive last November and met the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX), a group that ‘delivers data services, analysis, research and business information on the institutions that provide financial services to the world’s poor’. They wanted to see whether web-scraping could save them from manually gathering data. So fellow divers and I showed MIX the utility of web-scraping. Over the course of a day, about six people scraped data about microfinance institutions from a bunch of websites, saving MIX an estimated year of manual data entry.

Over the past few months, I worked further with MIX to study who has access to what sorts of financial services. DataKind just put up our blog post about the project. Read the post, or just look at the map and explore the data.

Source:https://blog.scraperwiki.com/2012/05/microfinance-data-scraping/

Web scraping tutorial

There are three ways to access a website data. One is through a browser, the other is using a API (if the site provides one) and the last by parsing the web pages through code. The last one also known as Web Scraping is a technique of extracting information from websites using specially coded programs.

In this post we will take a quick look at writing a simple scraperusing the simplehtmldom library. But before we continue a word of caution:

Writing screen scrapers and spiders that consume large amounts of bandwidth, guess passwords, grab information from a site and use it somewhere else may well be a violation of someone’s rights and will eventually land you in trouble. Before writing  a screen scraper first see if the website offers an RSS feed or an API for the data you are looking. If not and you have to use a scraper, first check the websites policies regarding automated tools before proceeding.

Now that we have got all the legalities out of the way, lets start with the examples.

1. Installing simplehtmldom.

Simplehtmldom is a PHP library that facilitates the process of creating web scrapers. It is a HTML DOM parser written in PHP5 that let you manipulate HTML in a quick and easy way. It is a wonderful library that does away with the messy details of regular expressions and uses CSS selector style DOM access like those found in jQuery.

First download the library from sourceforge.  Unzip the library in you PHP includes directory or a directory where you will be testing the code.

Writing our first scraper.

Now that we are ready with the tools, lets write our first web scraper. For our initial idea let us see how to grab the sponsored links section from a google search page.

There are three ways to access a website data. One is through a browser, the other is using a API (if the site provides one) and the last by parsing the web pages through code. The last one also known as Web Scraping is a technique of extracting information from websites using specially coded programs.

In this post we will take a quick look at writing a simple scraperusing the simplehtmldom library. But before we continue a word of caution:

Writing screen scrapers and spiders that consume large amounts of bandwidth, guess passwords, grab information from a site and use it somewhere else may well be a violation of someone’s rights and will eventually land you in trouble. Before writing  a screen scraper first see if the website offers an RSS feed or an API for the data you are looking. If not and you have to use a scraper, first check the websites policies regarding automated tools before proceeding.

Source: http://www.codediesel.com/php/web-scraping-in-php-tutorial/

Why scraping and why TheWebMiner?

If you read this blog you are one of two things: you are either interested in web scraping and you have studied this domain for quite a while, or you are just curious about this relatively new field of interest and want to know what it is, how it’s done and especially why. Either way it’s fine!

In case you haven’t googled already this I can tell you that data extraction (or scraping) is a technique in which a computer program extracts data from human-readable output coming from another program (wikipedia). Basically it can collect all the information on a certain subject from certain places. It’s sort of the equivalent of ctrl+f, at the scale of the whole internet. It’s nothing like the search engines that we currently use because it can extract the data in a certain file, as excel, csv (coma separated values) or any other that the buyer wants, and also extracts only the relevant data, only the values that you are interested in.

I hope now that you understand the concept and you are wondering just why would you need such data. Well let’s take the example of an online store, pretty common nowadays, and of course the manager just like any manager wants his business to thrive, so, for that he has to keep up with the other online stores. Now the web scraping takes place: it is very useful for him to have, saved as excels all the competitor’s prices of certain products if not all of them. By this he can maintain a fair pricing policy and always be ahead of his competitors by knowing all of their prices and fluctuations.  Of course the data collecting can also be done manually but this is not effective because we are talking of thousand of products each one having its own page and so on. This is only one example of situation in which scrapping is useful but there are hundreds and each one of them it’s profitable for the company.

By now I’ve talked about what it is and why you should be interested in it, from now on I’m going to explain why you should use thewebminer.com. First of all, it’s easy: you only have to specify what type of data you want and from where and we’ll manage the rest. Throughout the project you will receive first of all an approximation of price, followed by a time approximation. All the time you will be in contact with us so you can find out at any point what is the state of your project. The pricing policy is reasonable and depends on factors like the project size or complexity. For very big projects a discount may be applicable so the total cost be within reason.

Now I believe that thewebminer.com is able to manage with any kind of situation or requirement from users all over the world and to convince you, free samples are available at any project you may have or any uncertainty or doubt.

Source:http://thewebminer.com/blog/2013/07/