Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Archetypoid Analysis for Sports Analytics Vinu´ e, G. · Epifanio, I. the date of receipt and acceptance should be inserted later Abstract We intend to understand the growing amount of sports perfor- mance data by finding extreme data points, which makes human interpreta- tion easier. In archetypoid analysis each datum is expressed as a mixture of actual observations (archetypoids). Therefore, it allows us to identify not only extreme athletes and teams, but also the composition of other athletes (or teams) according to the archetypoid athletes, and to establish a ranking. The utility of archetypoids in sports is illustrated with basketball and soccer data in three scenarios. Firstly, with multivariate data, where they are compared with other alternatives, showing their best results. Secondly, despite the fact that functional data are common in sports (time series or trajectories), func- tional data analysis has not been exploited until now, due to the sparseness of functions. In the second scenario, we extend archetypoid analysis for sparse functional data, furthermore showing the potential of functional data analysis in sports analytics. Finally, in the third scenario, features are not available, so we use proximities. We extend archetypoid analysis when asymmetric relations are present in data. This study provides information that will provide valu- able knowledge about player/team/league performance so that we can analyze athlete’s careers. Keywords Archetype analysis · Sports data mining · Functional data analysis · Extreme point · Multidimensional scaling · Performance analysis This work has been partially supported by Grant DPI2013- 47279-C2-1-R. The databases and R code (including the web application) to reproduce the results can be freely accessed at www.uv.es/vivigui/software. Vinu´ e, G. Department of Statistics and O.R., University of Valencia, 46100 Burjassot, Spain Tel.: +34-659363291 E-mail: guillermo.vinue@uv.es Epifanio, I. Dept. Matem`atiques and Institut de Matem`atiques i Aplicacions de Castell´o. Campus del Riu Sec. Universitat Jaume I, 12071 Castell´ o, Spain Manuscript Click here to download Manuscript ada_sports_figures_third_revision.tex Click here to view linked References 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65