If you haven’t caught the trickle of publicity I’ve been putting out, the K-12 Analytic Challenge is a new project being hosted here at Hickory-High. A collaboration between myself and Eric Berson, the goal of the project is to bring together basketball analysis and education; giving students opportunities to learn about and practice mathematical modeling and scientific argumentation in an engaging setting.

The third in our series of challenges went up last Thursday and is open to submissions until September 30th. This challenge asks, “Who will win the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award for the 2012-2013 season?” At the challenge homepage you can find guidelines for submitting a response and scaffolded hints to help you along the way.

In addition, the challenge was discussed twice in the past few days on the Wages of Wins videocast. This first conversation features myself and host, Dre Alvarez, talking about the entire project, among other topics.
 

The second videocast features Dre, Arturo Galleti, and Vivek Netrakanti, talking about some of the characteristics which might be used to find an answer to Challenge #3, as well as some players that might be good candidates for a submission.
 

If you’re a student interested in the challenge but still need help getting started, just let us know at AnalyticChallenge@gmail.com