10 Win Statsketball Challenge, Prove Statistics Is Fun

Statsketball 2018 pitted students in 189 teams against each other to predict the outcomes of the 2018 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament using statistics.

The two contests included the “Pick ‘Em”: Upset Challenge to predict the winners of the first-round games and the “Build Your Own Bracket”: Draft Challenge to select teams from 224 draft points and assemble a cohort from seeded participants to earn the most overall points.

The contest invited students to apply statistics—the science of learning from data—to one of the biggest sporting events of the year, proving that statistics can be fun and applied to any field.

“Pick ‘Em”: Upset Challenge Winners

    High School

    • First Place: Sophie Mason, Senior, Valley Christian High School, San Jose, California
    • Honorable Mention: Gino Assenmacher, Junior, Monroe High School, Monroe, Michigan
    • Honorable Mention: Makendra Grubel, Senior, Mauldin High School, Simpsonville, South Carolina

    Undergraduate

    • First Place: Jake Oringel, Freshman, The University of North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina
    • Honorable Mention: Ashley King, Senior, Anderson University, Anderson, Indiana
    • Honorable Mention: Andy Li, Sophomore, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

    “Build Your Own Bracket”: Draft Challenge

      High School

      • First Place: Addie Morris, Senior, West Branch High School, Beloit, Ohio
      • Honorable Mention: Savanna Triplett, Senior, West Branch High School, Salem, Ohio

      Undergraduate

      • First Place: Luke Benz, Junior, Yale University, Middlebury, Vermont
      • Honorable Mention: Mitchell Collins, Senior, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California

      “The ASA congratulates this year’s Statsketball winners for their exceptional creativity and well-executed methodologies,” said ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein. “All the participants showed that statistics can be applied to any field of interest and can be fun as well.”