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Burry Professor of Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics Robin Lock and Julia Palmateer '07 won the the 2007 Statistics In Sports poster competition at the 2007 Joint Statistical Meetings in Salt Lake City, Utah. The project, titled "Assessing Ratings Methods for College Hockey Teams," was part of Palmateer's senior research.

The abstract states, "Many collegiate team sports in the United States are organized with multiple leagues where teams play a fairly full schedule of games against league opponents with a sparser schedule of games between teams from different leagues. This often creates difficulties when teams are to be compared across all leagues for national rankings or seeding in post season tournaments. A number of methods have been proposed to calibrate teams while accounting for performance and the quality of opponents. We use Monte Carlo simulations of multiple seasons to compare several existing models, such as raw winning percentage, rating percentage index (RPI), Bradley-Terry (KRACH) and Poisson scoring rates (CHODR), for rating college ice hockey teams."

Lock has maintained a Web site on college hockey statistics for many years. In addition to graduating summa cum laude with honors in both mathematics and psychology, Palmateer was a standout in both ice hockey and lacrosse during her undergraduate career.

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Posted: September 13, 2007