Department of Statistics Seminars

The aim of this investigation was to see whether statistical techniques could be used to determine what factors of a netball game are important to the success of a team in two main areas - feeding and shooting. Looking at the July 2004 Fisher and Paykel Series between New Zealand and Australia, each game was broken down into instances of feeding and shooting, and many variables for each instance were recorded. Logistic regression, classification trees and neural networks were used to model the probability of success for each team in their feeding, and for each shooter in their shooting. In modelling the probability of success in each of these situations, the factors that were most important to the success of each team and each shooter were investigated, and their effects quantified. Using these results, the success of different strategies could be compared.