Of the Divergence Theorem

I am minutes removed from submitting my final assignment of the semester. It's a good feeling, and now I can dedicate all my time and effort to a some projects and a couple finals. Unlike most semesters where I have a final in every single one of my classes, I don't have the stress of remembering formulas, theorems, and dates looming over my head. Instead I get to take my time making sure I'm satisfied with a project. It's a new thing for me (and likely won't happen in future semesters), but I'm enjoying it.

On this reading day, I'd like to take this blog post to write a few random thoughts I have:

• I enjoyed today's calc 3 homework on the Divergence Theorem much more than yesterday's on
  Stokes' Theorem. I'm more comfortable working with triple integrals for volumes than I am with flux integrals and oriented surfaces
• I have never been as excited about R programming as I have been the last few days when I've had hours to really dive into this volleyball project and learn a lot more about R's little tricks
• A quote I must agree with by my brother is, "Sometimes after a long day, seeing a few people get punched in the head is exactly what you want to see." 
• Here are the videos he was referring to:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3agHc02aPo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUIg27pvBrc
• Falling asleep to a thunderstorm is one of the most relaxing things of all time
• Steph Curry is still Steph Curry but the Warriors' bench is garbage
• Nothing beats a classic Bic 0.7 mechanical pencil
• Actually a good TA who is willing to help and knows the subject matter incredibly well beats the mechanical pencil. Shoutout to Adam Ott and Jacob Miller this semester for being those clutch TAs

It's been a fun exercise maintaining this weekly blog and entertaining all my readers (aka myself) by taking whatever is floating around in my head and slapping it down into actual words on a screen. I'd love to say I'll keep this blog up after the semester, but honestly it's probably very unlikely that actually happens. 

Signing out for the last time,

Log

Of Networking

I never really know what to write about on this blog, and this early afternoon was certainly no exception. I thought about writing about water monitors because this morning I saw a cool video of a massive one climbing shelves in a 7-Eleven in Thailand (see image). I also considered writing about our nearby planetary neighbor the moon (inspired by Kid Cudi's "Man On The Moon" album we're currently listening to). Today I guess I will embrace the business school culture and talk about the golden subject of networking. 

As one who feels like an imposter strolling through the Tanner as a stats major, I have always looked at the term "networking" with some level of contempt. My fellow stats major, blogger, and frisbee teammate and I have had several conversations (full of unfounded generalizations) about how the business school doesn't focus on hard skills but instead on building forced friendships they call "networking." These last couple months, however, I've had a change of heart, and have really learned the value of networking. More than anything I'm just grateful for people with more experience than me who are willing to share their knowledge, time, and advice.

The path of an accountant is very clearly defined: you get an internship at the big four, work there basically as a slave for several years hating your life, and slowly move up the ranks towards partner level or leave at some point to join or start a smaller firm. I guess you have two options: enjoy the thrilling life of an auditor or mix it up and go the tax route. Those are your only options. The path for a statistics major is much more broad and less-defined. You can go the actuary route, the data science route, the business intelligence route, the sports analytics route, the marketing analytics route, or some other random application you conceive. I love having all these options, but I'm getting to the point where I need to narrow down exactly how I will focus my last year of undergrad education, grad school education, and career path. 

There have been so many fascinating people I've learned from of various job types all with a similar background of data/statistics. All of them have provided me with a lot of insight about what my options are, what I'm most interested in, what skills would be useful to develop, and other people who would be useful to talk to. The people whose jobs most fascinate me are connections I never would have found without– yes, I'll say it– networking. My brother referred me to someone who used to be in his ward in San Francisco who currently works for the Cavs. That guy referred me to a guy who used to work at the Pistons and now works for another sports analytics industry. I told that guy I was probably more interested in the business/marketing side of the sports industry and he referred me to his brother-in-law who did marketing for the Wizards. That guy was very encouraging, insightful, optimistic, and willing to make lots of useful connections for me, including connecting me with a guy who does business analytics for the Arizona Coyotes and a guy at BYU who worked for the Utah Warriors rugby team.

Basically my point in this is that people are awesome, full of extremely useful knowledge, and willing to sacrifice a half hour of their precious time to talk to some random kid who is very distantly connected to them. I am grateful for the knowledge gained in the last few months from these 15-20 people who've been willing to talk to me. I have a much better idea of what I want to do with my stats background and know the tools to help me get to that position in the workplace. I hope I can be as willing and able to help students when I am further along in my career.

Of Fries, Revisited

A while ago we discussed together a stirring debate about french fry preferences and doubts about the validity of the public opinion. Today we revisit this theme. I'm not a big fan of Wendy's fries, and I had in my mind that McDonald's had absolutely fantastic fries. A couple weeks ago I had them and I regretfully admit that they were not nearly as good as I had remembered. Are they still better than Wendy's fries? Probably so. But it sparked the question of which restaurant truly has the best french fries. 

With it being March and thus having invested quite a bit of time in college basketball's March Madness (as good as the Christmas season, almost), I thought the best way to determine which restaurant truly has the best fries was to build a bracket and have people vote on the two choices on my Instagram story. I asked people for submissions of their favorite fry places and was hoping for enough to fill a classic 64 team bracket, but I didn't have enough so we went with 32 teams. Seeding was determined by how many people had submitted the particular (more submissions roughly equates to more popularity). 

Here are a couple hypotheses and notes about the structure of this endeavor:

• 
  The goal with this was to narrow down the field enough to go try maybe the top eight and decide for myself
• I predicted that Chick Fil A, McDonald's, and Wendy's would all be in the final game and win despite not actually being that good
• This is obviously a biased study as people see a name and associate it with having good fries
• To standardize this, I only included original fries (no Arby's curly fries or sweet potato fries from Cubby's, or Cajun fries from Five Guys, etc)
  

Much to my disappointment (although not to my surprise), the final was Wendy's and Chick Fil A. Chick Fil A won. A common consensus was that the elite 8 matchup of Five Guys and Red Robin should have been the actual championship. Now I have a much better idea of what restaurants to go to to try their fries. Attached is the completed bracket with the seeding and vote totals for all 2 of my readers if they happen to have interest in this.

On an unrelated note, the "A Rush of Blood to the Head" album by Coldplay is absolutely fantastic. So good,

Of Wind

Today was the first time playing collegiate ultimate against a school other than ourselves since 15 February 2020. We lost that game over a year ago on universe point to then number one ranked Brown University (we passed them that week to become number one before COVID ended our season). After such a long hiatus we were ready for some competition.

We arrived at the fields in South Jordan today to super gusty winds which, as you can imagine, really make things interesting with a 175 gram plastic plate. Almost every tournament in high school was played in gusty winds, and the wind can either level the playing field or really widen the gap between the two teams. Nobody likes playing in the wind, especially when it's 40 degrees outside. Adding to the wind was the fact that we were playing without several of our veteran players and key contributors and we knew our competition was not going to be at the elite level we are used to playing against.  

Considering the wind, personnel, and competition factors, I was worried we were not going to show up mentally to play. A tendency of our team (and honestly probably any team) is to play to the level of an opponent. If we know we are a far better team than the other squad it's easy to not play our hardest and instead mess around and play sloppy. Today we were crisp and dominant and won both games 10-2 (over BYU Idaho and BYU b-team). We played hard, didn't have many turnovers, and controlled the tempo of every game from the first pull. Even though those teams are no Brown, Pitt, or UNC, it was great being able to go at it against some other teams than ourselves. Tomorrow should be another good day of dominant ultimate. 

To Jacob Miller (if he still reads this), we ran 3-3-1 and 2-4-1 zones force backhand (going upwind and crosswind) to trap them on the downwind side and force lower percentage looks. We had the wing mid play really shallow to stop the chisels and handler movement and that shut them down. Lots of long points but zero breaks by the o line on Friday and only one Saturday against Timpview (who we beat 13-3).

Update: Saturday we went 4-0 over Timpview (high school), BYU Idaho again, Lone Peak (high school), and a group of players from the Logan area. Feels good to be sunburned again. 

Of Critters

This post is dedicated to small animals. Today as we enjoyed the warm sun in hammocks, the question was presented about the difference between worms and nightcrawlers. We learned that the term "earthworm" is sort of like the term "mouse." While we know what a mouse is, are we aware that there are several different species of mice with differences in size, appearance, diet, range, etc? The same goes for earthworms. When we use the term "worm" we usually refer to red worms also known as compost worms, They are known for being small, red in color, and excellent for use in compost heaps. Nightcrawlers, however, are more grey in color and can grow up to 14 inches long. Also known as dew worms, nightcrawlers are often seen at night when there is condensation on the grass and it is cooler outside. If you want to learn more about the fascinating difference between these underground allies of ours, visit this page. 

Now let us turn our attention to the boxelder bug. Boxelder bugs get their name since they're always hanging around boxelder trees. They are black beetles that can fly around if they so desire. You can tell it's a boxelder bug because of the way it is, and also since it has an orange x on its back. People always lose their minds about boxelder bugs ("Get it away from me!!! Please!!! Help!!!") but they don't do anything. They can't bite you and they can't sting you but they're just sort of there in the way. I suppose they're a pain as they congregate in huge groups and randomly just show up and cover patio furniture and whole sides of houses. 

Another fun critter is a snake. Snakes are highly underrated creatures and are quite fascinating if you think about them. Their ability to traverse such variable terrains at rapid speeds without limbs is astonishing. Most snake species you'll run into around Provo, Utah are nonvenomous and aren't trying to bit your hand
off. Because Aptive texted me this week trying to recruit me to spray pesticides this summer (hard pass), here is the weekly blog photo of a snake and an Aptive shirt. 

Celebrate the warm temperatures by going outside and appreciating all the underrated critters that are emerging after another cold winter.

Of Corn Doggies

Today I'm just going to write about a few different random things that really aren't related to each other at all besides being correlated in time. Yesterday was 50 cent corn doggy day at Sonic so you know we took advantage of that. Three of us went to the Sonic in Provo and they told us they were out of corn doggies which was very disappointing. We went to another Sonic and they granted our request for 11 corn doggies which were joyfully consumed. I think Arctic Circle still might have the edge in the corn doggy department, but 50 cents is a deal that must be taken advantage of. 

Partially stemming from the prior discussion of french-type fry preferences (see Of Fries), I've decided to make a 32-team bracket to help determine what local restaurant has the best fries (at least per people's opinions via an Instagram story poll). I've asked for submissions and have more than enough for 32 but not for the full 64-team bracket. Most people who've sent in submissions have said McDonald's, so I'm curious if they'll remain on top after all 31 matchups. I had their fries a couple weeks ago and I was actually sort of disappointed. Perhaps there will be another future post about fries – either regarding the people's choices of best fries or after having tried the best fries ourselves to see if my Instagram following has good taste in regards to fries.

Last night CHI had Provo Rec all to ourselves, which was a joyous occasion. There were games of basketball, volleyball, pickleball, and even some spikeball going. Volleyball is such an interesting sport because I've watched it for years so I know a lot about the intricacies about the game (positioning, tactics, rotations, etc) but I've never really played it. I played on Jordan High's club team for one year, but none of us had ever played before so it was pretty low quality volleyball. Since I know the game so well, I naturally assumed I'd be able to step out on the court and play at a high level. It was kind of fun actually performing way under my own expectations and not being "the guy" on any of the teams I was on. I knew where to be on the court, but my sets were not as buttery as I hoped, my passing could have been better, I tipped too often instead of getting a solid swing on the ball, I completely whiffed on a balls perfectly set to me, and I think I had maybe one block the whole night. It gave me a whole new level of respect for the skills and the athleticism of collegiate volleyball players. They're just at a completely different level, and it'll be fun to watch them in person tomorrow night. 

Shoeman spent the last few weeks collecting materials to build a forge outside and melt sheets of copper down to pour into a mold for a desk weight. He spent the morning melting the copper down to molten metal (very impressed he succeeded in that task) but then the crucible was too hot for the tongs. The tongs would bend as he tried to extract the crucible to be able to pour into the mold. He's going to collect a few more materials and give it another shot soon. Needless to say, it's always exciting to see what ideas this fine roommate comes up with, and highly entertaining when he actually goes through with them.

Of Statistics

Today's blog post is dedicated to my wonderful, faithful friend named statistics, or "stats" or "bae" for short. As is the case with any of these writing exercises disguised as blog posts, this post will focus on whatever subject happens to be on my mind on Thursday evening or Friday morning. 

I'm currently working on a project with the BYU volleyball team. In different interviews and conversations with friends and enemies, I've been asked what exactly my project consists of. I want to practice giving a concise response that explains the nature and extent of the problem in terms a normal person would understand, so here is an attempt:

An important metric to look at while analyzing team performance is serving performance and efficiency. A common, yet ineffective way to accomplish this is by looking at the number of service errors and aces. While a good step, it's hard to really see how effective a server is by the number of serves that immediately end the point since the majority of the serves stay in play. Each serve and serve receive is graded. We're focusing on serve receive grade, meaning the player on the opposing team who makes contact with the ball after the serve is graded on how well he passes a ball. 

Using data from about 48000 games from 2016-2021, my job is to sort all the serves in to buckets on if they were perfect passes, positive passes, average passes, incomplete passes (ball goes all the way back over the net), poor passes, failed passes (service aces), or if there was no serve receive grade (service error). What we're looking for is called the first ball side out percentage, which is the percentage of times the receiving teams wins the point on that very first possession. We want to find the overall first ball side out percentage for men's volleyball, as well as the expected first ball side out percentage for each of those serve receive buckets. 

When the pass is perfect, the setter is in perfect position to run the offense. He has the option to set the pin hitters, set the middle, set a back row attacker, or dump it himself. However, with a poor pass the setter is off the net and his options are basically reduced to setting the pin hitters. With fewer options, the serving team has a better idea of where to set the block, how many blockers to send, and allows the remaining defenders to properly position themselves to dig the ball and continue the point. 

Having the coefficients for each category will allow for in-game analysis of serving performance. Using only aces and errors, it is hard to tell how effective a player's serving is with, for example, high numbers in both aces and errors. Are the 3 aces worth 4 free points from service errors? Hard to tell. However, since we expect the FBSO to be lower on poor passes than on perfect passes, we can get a good read on how truly effective these servers would be. Despite not having an ace, a player could have a very low expected FBSO. This tool provides coaches with better service indicators to enable them to be able to properly instruct players to either continue with the same serving strategy (speed, location, serve type, etc) or make adjustments to be more effective. 

As part of this project I'm also pulling out the expected FBSO for individual players. This will allow coaches to see how their players stack up nationally on the service efficiency spectrum and to be able to provide their players with individual benchmark goals to work towards. 

It's been fun watching the volleyball games this season in a new light. Understanding the impact of a good or a bad serve receive has really opened my eyes to why these numbers would be so useful to have as a coach. I'm grateful for STAT 495 R, Zach Knowlton, and BYU Men's Volleyball, especially Devin Young and Giuseppe Vinci, for the opportunity to do this project.

Because pictures are fun, here is one from Devin's senior night when he was still winning the MPSF as a player, not as a coach.