Growth curves to predict athlete performance

Our December meeting will feature a talk from Katy McKeough, PhD student at Harvard University. Katy will talk about novel bayesian models to predict athlete performance . Join us to learn more about this interesting topic and share your story with fellow bayesians.

Title:
Growth curves to predict athlete performance

Abstract:
It is often the goal of sports analysts, coaches and fans to predict athlete performance over time. Methods such as Elo, Glicko and Placket-Luce based ratings measure athlete skill based on results of competitions over time but have limited predictive strength on their own. Growth curves are often applied in the context of sports to predict future ability, but these curves are too simple to account for complex career trajectories. We propose a mixture of non-linear, mixed-effects growth curves to model the ratings as a function of athlete age and time. The mixture of growth curves allows for flexibility of the estimated shape of the career trajectories between athletes as well as between sports. We use the fitted growth curves to make predictions about the future career trajectory of an athlete in two ways: as a way to model how performance progresses over time in a multi-competitor scenario as an extension to the Plackett-Luce model and as a two-step method that can be applied to any rating system. We show how easily generalizable this method is to many different sports with specific examples from men's slalom and women's luge.

Bio:
Katy McKeough is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Harvard University Statistics Department. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2015 with a B.S. in Physics & Statistics. Her research involves using advanced statistical models in applied settings including sports analytics and astrostatistics.

Agenda:
6:00pm: Meet and greet. Networking
6:30pm: Talk by Katy McKeough + Q&A
7:30pm: Networking
8:30pm: End of the event

Location:
WeWork at Central Square, Cambridge **note different location than usual! **

Sponsors:
This event is sponsored by QuantumBlack, a McKinsey Company.