> I am a recent curling addict,
Olympic Curling -- Business Prof Reveals Winning Strategies Library: LIF-POP Keywords: OLYMPICS CURLING SPORTS STATISTICS PROBABILITY MATH BUSINESS MANAGEMENT Description: Bucknell business professor Keith Willoughby, an Olympic curling fanatic and self-proclaimed "math geek," has done sophisticated statistical analyses of championship curling games -- an Olympic event -- that highlight winning game strategies.
Olympic curling, winning strategies, statistical analysis of curling victories
Keith Willoughby Assistant professor of management Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Office phone: 570/577-1751, e-mail: kwilloug at bucknell.edu
A Canadian by birth and a curling fanatic, Bucknell business professor Keith Willoughby is a self-proclaimed "math geek who loves watching curling but can't do it very well."
He knows that most Americans either don't know what curling is or consider it deadly dull -- in fact, he gleefully cites a USA TODAY story that called curling "the poster boy for Olympic torpidity." But Willoughby loves the event, and has done sophisticated statistical analyses of curling that highlight winning game strategies.
For the uninitiated, curling is an indoor Olympic event that resembles shuffleboard or bocce on ice. In curling, 44-pound granite disks with handles -- they look sort of like big stone teakettles -- are slid down a 146-foot by 14-foot playing area. There are four team members -- one who slides the disk, two who use brooms or brushes to polish the ice in front of the disk so it slides farther and straighter, and one who shouts instructions to the two players with the brooms.
Points are won by placing the disks inside a target that looks like a bulls-eye, made up of four concentric circles. Players do not wear ice skates. A game consists of 10 "ends," resembling innings in baseball, but Willoughby says that if one team thinks the other team's lead is insurmountable, they can call it quits, "shake hands and go for a beer."
Willoughby and his colleague, Kent Kostuk (a Ph.D. candidate in civil engineering at the University of Saskatchewan), have analyzed 902 Canadian men's national championship games played between 1985 and 1997. Their analysis revealed that it is not generally an advantage to play offense first in an "end" -- just as in baseball it may be better for a team to come to bat at the bottom of the inning (especially the ninth).
However -- contrary to many players' thinking -- a team is more likely to win if it is one point ahead in the final end, without the chance to shoot last, than if it is one point behind and has the chance to shoot last.
Willoughby urges all Americans to watch the Olympics, watch curling, and be especially observant of late-game strategy.
A Bucknell connection to the current U.S. men's Olympic curling team: two of the five team members are employees of Home Depot, the home improvement chain co-founded by Kenneth Langone, an investment banker and 1957 Bucknell alum.
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Media queries about Willoughby's research may be directed to Alan Janesch, associate director of public relations at Bucknell, at ajanesch at bucknell.edu or 570/577-3631.
===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 http://www.yaysoft.com
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