Schedule

Monday, April 26, 2021

(Central Daylight Time U.S. and Canada)

9:00 – 9:15 am University Welcome and Opening Remarks

SESSION CHAIR: Katherine Ensor, Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics and Director, CoFES

• • Reginald DesRoches, Howard R. Hughes Provost, Professor, Civil & Environmental and Mechanical Engineering
  • Rudy Guerra, Professor and Chair, Department of Statistics
  • Clark Haptonstall, Program Director and Chair, Department of Sport Management

9:15 – 9:45 AM Keynote Lecture

• • Ed Feng, Founder of The Power Rank

How to Make Sports Predictions Based on Data

9:45 – 10:30 am Session I, Panel Discussion

MODERATOR:  Clark Haptonstall, Program Director and Chair, Department of Sport Management, Rice University

• • Jerry Bo, Professional Sports Gambler and Radio Host on Houston’s ESPN 97.5
  • Declan Hill, Associate Professor, University of New Haven
  • Ed Feng, Founder of The Power Rank
  • Tony Miller, Executive Director of Race & Sports, Golden Nugget Las Vegas

10:30 – 10:45 AM Break

10:45 AM-12:00 pM Session II, 30 min lectures with 5 min Q&A

SESSION CHAIR: Clark Haptonstall, Program Director and Chair, Department of Sport Management, Rice University

• • Declan Hill, Associate Professor, University of New Haven; Author of The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime

The Coming Tsunami of Corruption in U.S. Sports

• • Hua Gong, Assistant Professor, Sport Analytics, Rice University

Referee bias in the NBA: Evidence from games during the COVID-19 pandemic

12:00 – 12:30 pm Break

12:30 – 1:45 pm Session III, 30 min lectures with 5 min Q&A

SESSION CHAIR:  James Disch, Associate Professor, Sport Management, Rice University

• • Chris Anderson, Professor, European Politics and Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science; Author, The Numbers Game

Playing the Numbers Game: Analytics and Decision Making in Elite Soccer

• • Wayne Winston, Professor Emeritus Operations and Decision Technologies, Indiana University; Author of Mathletics

Sports Gambling: A Tutorial

1:45 – 3:00 pm Session IV, 30 min lectures with 5 min Q&A

SESSION CHAIR: Daniel Kowal, Dobelman Family Assistant Professor, Rice University

• • Ben Jedlovec, Senior Director, Baseball Data Quality, Major League Baseball

Statcast: The Next Generation of Baseball Data

• • Brian Macdonald, Special Faculty in Sports Analytics, Carnegie Mellon University

NBA Real Plus-Minus, Forecasting, and Storytelling in the COVID Era

3:00 – 3:30 Pm cOFES PRIZE IN COMPUTATIONAL STATISTICS, closing remarks

• • Katherine Ensor, Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics and Director, CoFES

• • John Dobelman, Professor in the Practice of Statistics and Associate Director, CoFES