According to Advaiit Iyer, teaching others is the best way to learn something. He and Nitish Shah did it by forming the Youth Sports Analytics Forum (Ysaf). The two are seniors from Chantilly High School, where they have run the school’s sports analysis club since they were in the second year.
The high school club works “with the women’s basketball and male baseball teams at Richmond University to give them statistical information to help improve their team. We would analyze statistics as a club, then we would give them a proposal or a document summarizing everything we do, “said Iyer.
“It is known as a predictive modeling. He is taking the data to create a code, to create a model from data to predict future results, “said Shah. “It’s a concept of automatic learning.” He said that the objective was to present these concepts because “they will do much of our future. We can already see how impact on things like that. »»
The boys thought there was a way to take what they were already doing in their club and open it to more people around the world. This goal led them to found Ysaf. When they started, they had no resources. They started by targeting sports groups. This meant a lot of rejection, but finally led to some important contacts.
“When we started with Nyu (New York University), it took a lot of hands, but they finally responded to our email. They were interested in what we had to offer, and from there, we were able to set foot on the ground, “said Shah.
Nyu was the group’s first competition. The candidates received data on the Nyu basketball team and their season until the competition. Each participant has taken the data and has created a proposal to predict the next five team games.
To judge the Nyu competition, the team looked for proposals that were well structured, used an appropriate grammar and content of the code that worked. They wanted to see creative uses of data that lead to nuanced solutions. The most significant variable was whose predictions were the most precise in the real world.
They want YSAF to reach poorly served communities. Erk Ughur, the group’s technical director, has links with the Uighur community. They contacted the Uighur community in the United States, but would like to be even more international.
“Since we are a non -profit organization, you know, everything you can participate in is free. There is no obstacle to the entry in addition to a computer and the internet that works, what we understand could be a difficulty for some, so we have people contact us and try to find alternatives to that “Said Iyer.
For competitions, Ysaf encourages children without computers to visit their library and use free technology. They chose to accept handwritten papers. When they receive non -ordinary entries, they even try to reach out to school districts to seek ways to help these students.
Ysaf has a competition that offers the Duke University football team. This competition is a little different. Since the end of the football season, the proposals of the competitors will not have the chance to be tested in a real test field. Applicants will have to examine the performance of last season, potential recruits and the transfer portal when they make suggestions. The winner’s work will go to the Duke football team, so there is a prestige added.
“We are in a way the first people we have ever seen to provide a large -scale competition of this type that uses sports analyzes and fill them with data science,” said Shah. “It’s just a good way to ensure that (students) present themselves to sports analysis, and it is just a fun way to interact with these things and to present themselves to these tools which will be so important for the future labor market. “