Announcing the 2017 Statsketball Winners
April 19, 2017
As the buzzer sounded over North Carolina’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament victory, This is Statistics’s first Statsketball competition also came to an end. And that means we’ve got winners!
Congratulations To Our Top-Placing Teams
Pick ‘Em Upset Challenge Winners
- High School: Naveen Gooneratne, senior, Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, Pa.
- Undergraduate: Michael McLaughlin, junior, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.
Build Your Own Bracket Draft Challenge Winners
- High School: James Andrews, Jordan Levy, and Connor Heuerman, seniors, College Park High School, Pleasant Hills, Calif.
- Undergraduate: Jason Thompson and Graham Pash, sophomores, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C.
The ASA also congratulates the runners-up in the Tournament contests:
- High School: Miles Kelly; Aidan Trainer; Jessie Epstein
- Undergraduate: Brady Ulloa; Matt Hansen
“We wanted students to think hard about how they might take available information and turn it into some understanding of what future events might look like,” ASA executive director Ronald L. Wasserstein stated in a Wall Street Journal article about the contest. “You could pick your team based on your favorite color, or you could use a model that takes into account player performance, home and road activity, and records against similar opponents.”
In the Upset Challenge, students picked the teams most likely to win in an upset in the Round of 64, earning two points for each winner picked correctly and additional points for predicting an upset, correlated to the difference between those teams’ seed rankings.
The Draft Challenge assigned a draft point value for each seed, with highest seeded teams receiving the highest point value (75 points) and the lowest seeded teams the least (1 point). Entrants compiled a group of teams with the most potential for round-by-round victories, without exceeding 224 draft points. For each round one of their teams advanced, students received points.
For more about Statsketball, check out these posts:
- Statsketball: A Roundup of Ways Statistics is Changing Basketball
- 5 Top Trends from the Statsketball Tournament Entries
- Statsketball: Meet the Judges
Or, visit the Statsketball contest page.
Related Posts
Hindsight Is 2023 for Former Statistics and Data Science Students
It’s back-to-school season! Gear up for the upcoming semester and consider diving into the captivating world of statistics and data science. Looking for diverse job opportunities that span across every industry? Look no further! With a variety of graduate programs and jobs, now is a great time for students to become data scientists and statisticians….
Elizabeth J. Kelly: “Statistics is for Adrenaline Junkies”
Elizabeth J. Kelly has always loved math, and as a professional statistician at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and a recreational rock climber, Elizabeth is an avid thrill-seeker who enjoys a challenge. “Math reminds me of climbing, including the need to focus, problem solve and persevere. I guess I ended up in statistics because I…