ABSTRACT Recent advances in data collection have made sports an attractive testing ground for new analyses and algorithms, and a fascinating controlled microcosm in which to explore social interactions. In this talk I will describe two studies in this arena: one related to public health and the pandemic and one related to decision-making in basketball.  In the first, I will discuss what can be learned from the natural experiments that were (fortuitously) run in America football stadiums. During the 2020…