1. 1550 Owens Store Road
Canton, GA 30115
4/18/2012
Judges, Senior Project
Creekview High School
1550 Owens Store Road
Canton, GA 30115
Dear Judges:
My name is Keith Woods and I have been a student here at Creekview High
School for four consecutive years. During my time here I have played baseball,
basketball, and football, playing both basketball and football on the varsity level. I am
also currently taking part in the spring musical at Creekview. My senior project is to
examine the Creekview boy’s basketball team’s 2011-2012 season through advanced
statistical analysis.
My product will be a book with all of the statistics that I calculated for each
individual on the Creekview varsity basketball team. It will also include team statistics
that I calculated. It will resemble the type of booklet one would receive if they attended
an NBA basketball game. My research paper helped me to learn about the new wave of
analysis sweeping the NBA and I learned that there is as a devout group of basketball
fans who are developing complex theories of analytics and coming up with new
mathematical ways to analyze the game of basketball. I felt that I gained a greater
understanding of the game of basketball through the calculation of these advanced
statistics, but lament the fact that I was not able to calculate more because of the lack of
data I had about the team from game to game. Many of the formulas used to calculate
advanced statistics include the opponent’s data, which I was not able to obtain.
The reason that I picked this topic was because of my interest in the world of
sports and also in the world of statistics. In tenth grade I took the AP Statistics class
offered by Creekview High School. It piqued my interest in statistics and eventually I
came to appreciate statistics so much that I decided I wanted my job to be in the field of
applied mathematics. And applying mathematical formulas to a sport I love, such as
basketball, appealed to me greatly. I think that it is amazing that we are able to quantify
physical activities through the use of mathematics.
My Senior project felt less like work to me and more as if I was exploring a new
world that I had never seen before. Every time I would calculate a new statistic, I felt my
understanding of the game of basketball continuing to grow. Thank you for reading my
letter and observing my senior project.
Sincerely,
Keith Woods