A research team of Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics won the 19th annual competition of the Sloan MIT search document.
Sports management department Student and principal author Alivia Uribe ’25, teacher of sports analysis Shane Sanders and associate teacher of sports analysis Justin Ehrlich Teaming Professor James Reade, Professor of the University of Stirling (Scotland), the principal professor of the University of Stirling (Scotland), Carl Singleton, to write “to make the behavioral considerations of the Cloud-Kick Penalty Optimization of the location in Professional Football: Theory of the games and empirical tests using polynomial regression and the improvement of the Gradient ML”.
Their research has been better named in the prestigious field Sloan Sports Analytics MIT conferenceheld from March 7 to 8 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Sloan Sports Analytics conference presents advanced research that appears in the best media around the world and has changed the way sports are analyzed. This year’s competition included six sports tracks: basketball, baseball, football, football, sports affairs and other sports. The summaries were selected on the basis of novelty, academic rigor and the impact of research.
The team that won the research document competition during the prestigious Sloan Sports Analytics conference included, from left to right, Shane Sanders, James Reade, Alivia Uribe and Justin Ehrlich.
Ehrlich explained that the group had submitted a summary in the fall. Out of thousands of bids, the most promising were invited to submit complete documents. These manuscripts were then evaluated and the authors of the seven main articles were invited to present themselves orally at the Boston conference earlier this month. A panel of industry experts judged these presentations and the winner was announced during a award ceremony at the end of the conference.
“I am incredibly proud of the work of our team because it resulted in a fantastic project that resonates deeply with others,” explains Ehrlich. “Although targeting risky areas, higher areas of the objective can produce expected conversion rates, players generally avoid these areas because of the increased risk of completely missing, which carries a negative perception. Our results have generated enthusiasm among the many participants and received considerable attention at the conference. ”
Uribe, an attacker on the Syracuse University Women’s Football teamis the first main woman to be part of the winning team of the research document competition in the 19 years of MIT Sloan history, according to the event organizers.
“This is something that I am extremely proud of,” said Uibe, a minor of sports analyzes. “I could not be more grateful for teachers who helped me create this opportunity. The knowledge and expertise that I bring as a student-athlete is something very unique. ”
Sanders and Ehrlich are based on their previous analysis research to help Uibe in his research, while Reade and Singleton provided invaluable football data. It was the second consecutive year that Sanders and Ehrlich had a research document selected from the first seven of MIT Sloan. Last year, they presented their study on the NBA which shows that the average expected value of the 3-point shots has become less than 2 points since the 2017-2018 season.
“The Falk College is an ideal place to work and teach, the best college with which I have ever been affiliated from afar,” explains Sanders. “Administrators, teachers and students really meet here as nowhere else. In addition, our management team positioned Sport Analytics to shine as a program. ”
Read the team’s full research document on Sloan MIT Web of search articles.