I Contest*: Democratizing Ultimate

Frisbee Data

I Contest*: Democratizing Ultimate

Frisbee Data

*When a foul is called in ultimate, the player who committed the foul can choose to contest or not contest the foul call.

Today’s presentation

1) My journey to understand the structure of the college ultimate frisbee season

2) My contribution: sharing the data that I’ve gathered

3) Part of something bigger

Seattle High School Girls’ Club Team, National Champs 2009

Me!

With UW, 2010

UW at College Nationals, 2012

UW at Northwest Regionals 2014

Seattle women’s elite tryout, 2014

College Ultimate Season Structure

About 100 regular season tournaments per year2-3 conferences per region10 regions20 spots at nationals

2009 Season Structure Change

Bids distributed evenly bids distributed by algorithm

Excerpts from the Official Rules of Ultimate: 11th Edition

From the Preface: The integrity of Ultimate depends on each player's responsibility to uphold the Spirit of the Game, and this responsibility should remain paramount.

From Section 1. Introduction, item B. Spirit of the Game. Ultimate relies upon a spirit of sportsmanship that places the responsibility for fair play on the player. Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of mutual respect among competitors, adherence to the agreed upon rules, or the basic joy of play. Protection of these vital elements serves to eliminate unsportsmanlike conduct from the Ultimate field. Such actions as taunting opposing players, dangerous aggression, belligerent intimidation, intentional infractions, or other 'win-at-all-costs' behavior are contrary to the Spirit of the Game and must be avoided by all players.

Excerpts from the Official Rules of Ultimate: 11th Edition

From the Preface: The integrity of Ultimate depends on each player's responsibility to uphold the Spirit of the Game, and this responsibility should remain paramount.

From Section 1. Introduction, item B. Spirit of the Game. Ultimate relies upon a spirit of sportsmanship that places the responsibility for fair play on the player. Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of mutual respect among competitors, adherence to the agreed upon rules, or the basic joy of play. Protection of these vital elements serves to eliminate unsportsmanlike conduct from the Ultimate field. Such actions as taunting opposing players, dangerous aggression, belligerent intimidation, intentional infractions, or other 'win-at-all-costs' behavior are contrary to the Spirit of the Game and must be avoided by all players.

How can communities use math and algorithms to make decisions in ways that are sensitive to the values of the community?

By winter of my senior year, I had: Courses: computer programming, mathematical modeling, health informatics, data visualization

Internships: networks research at Montana State University and data visualization consulting company in Seattle

Extra work with project mentor.

✔ ✔

College Ultimate Season Structure

No set schedule for teams during regular season.

Network Theory

Network Theory

Network Analysis: Who is the Best Tennis Player Ever?

Network Theory

Network Theory

Network Theory

Network Analysis: Who is the Best Tennis Player Ever?

Data Visualization

Our brains are built for pictures, not numbers.

Data Visualization

Our brains are built for pictures, not numbers.

New insights into large data sets.

Fun!

Getting Data

USA Ultimate website: tournament result pages, but no full-season data for download

Breakthrough: Ultiarchive.com launched Feb. 7, 2014, shares their data!

My Data Set

2004-2013 seasonsOver 100,000 gamesWinner, loser, score, tournament location, time of game, and more

Sharing Data

Sharing Data

King County shares real-time bus location data: we get OneBusAway

Sharing Data

King County shares real-time bus location data: we get OneBusAway

US Gov shares data

Q: You’ll release the data and just hope people do interesting things with it?A: Yes. Think about the Department of Defense. Modern Satellite data was made available, you had this explosion in the private GPS market. Now GPS is available on your iPhone, so if you’re lost you can navigate. The car rental industry uses it. Google and Facebook use it to help you get real-time information on where your friends are and where the closest restaurant is. The key is recognizing that we don’t have a monopoly on good ideas and that the federal government doesn’t have infinite resources.

- USA Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, October 2009

Sharing Data

King County shares real-time bus location data: we get OneBusAway

US Gov shares data

Making my website

US Open Data Website

PNW Civic Data Website

Concluding Remarks

An analogy:On the field, ultimate players are expected to know the rules and trust their opponents to know and follow the rules as well.

Off the field, we need to hold ourselves to the same standard.

Next Steps

• Make and publish website to share data• Finalize CEP write-up• After graduation, I’m interning in the data

science division at an advertising company

Reflection

Reflection

We all have something to contribute to our communities.

Reflection

We all have something to contribute to our communities.

Putting yourself out there is scary.

THANK YOU!