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Rigged or Random? How Angry Bettors, Game Fixing, and Controversy Affect the Integrity of the Sports World
Get PDFThis paper explores how the legalization of sports betting has fueled fan outrage, athlete harassment, and mistrust in professional and collegiate athletics. It explores the psychology of sports gamblers, the role of social media and online betting, and recent scandals in the sports world. It also highlights the measures being taken by the NCAA, government, and professional sports leagues to protect athletes and maintain integrity. This paper ultimately questions whether true integrity can be maintained in a sports world increasingly influenced by gambling
NUTMEG: Separating Signal From Noise in Annotator Disagreement
No full textNLP (natural language processing) models often rely on human-labeled data for training and evaluation. Many approaches crowdsource this data from a large number of annotators with varying skills, backgrounds, and motivations, resulting in conflicting annotations. These conflicts have traditionally been resolved by aggregation methods that assume disagreements are errors. Recent work has argued that for many tasks annotators may have genuine disagreements and that variation should be treated as signal rather than noise. However, limited work has combined the two frameworks to separate signal from noise in human-labeled data. In this work, we introduce NUTMEG, a new Bayesian model that incorporates information about annotator backgrounds to remove noisy annotations from human-labeled training data while preserving systematic disagreements. We then use a synthetic data evaluation framework to show that NUTMEG is more effective at recovering ground-truth from annotations with systematic disagreement than traditional aggregation methods. We provide further analysis characterizing how differences in subpopulation sizes, rates of disagreement, and rates of spam affect the performance of our model. Finally, we demonstrate that downstream models trained on data aggregated by NUTMEG significantly outperform both models trained on traditionally aggregated data and models trained on the full set of disaggregated annotations. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for both annotator competence and systematic disagreements when training on human-labeled data
Sports Injury Prevention - Epidemiological Analysis of Concussion Mechanisms in Female Soccer Players: A Review of NEISS Data (2020–2023)
Get PDFConcussions are a significant concern in women’s soccer, with many studies showing that women have a higher rate of having them than compared to men. The number of concussions in athletes have raised concerns about long-term health and calls for a deeper look into ways to prevent them from occurring. The purpose of this study is to review the epidemiological data related to the mechanisms of concussions as a result of soccer, specifically within female participants. The data was obtained from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) from the years 2020 through 2023. Specifically, the narrative was used to identify the concussion mechanism once it was diagnosed. The study explicitly looked at female participants. Concussions related to soccer activity have increased each year from 2020 to 2023. The majority of concussions (82.3%) occurred between the ages of 12 and 17. Of all locations where a concussion occurred, 72.5% occurred at a place of recreation. The mechanism that was most prominent (41.4%) was being hit with the ball. Contact with another player was next up causing 28.9% of the concussions. Other common mechanisms included tripping and falling, being kicked, elbowed, or kneed, and running into the goalpost. Being hit with the ball includes the ball hitting the player, as well as the player incorrectly heading the ball. The results identify some important aspects to potentially look into. This includes the importance of location of where these concussions are occurring. The majority (72.5%) occurring in a place of recreation could show that there are different playing styles, less supervision, and less structured play in recreational sports, compared to sports at school. Another aspect to look into is that being hit with the ball or incorrectly heading the ball is the top mechanism for concussions, which calls for a correction of fundamental skills to further prevent them
The Straining Effect of House v NCAA on College Athletics Departments
Get PDFThis thesis examines the implications of the House v. NCAA ruling on collegiate athletic departments, particularly in light of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) compensation and the NCAA\u27s new revenue-sharing model. Through analysis of programs like Tennessee, Arkansas, and Auburn, this research reveals how schools are attempting to rethink revenue strategies, leveraging corporate partnerships, subscription models, and donor collectives to remain competitive. It also highlights disparities between Power 4 programs and smaller Division I schools, raising concerns over widening resource gaps, Title IX compliance, and roster reductions. Ultimately, this study concludes that while NIL reforms address athlete equity, they also create significant financial strain and ethical tensions, forcing universities to reevaluate the sustainability and mission of collegiate athletics in a newly commercialized environment
The Games Kids Play: Determining Concussion Risk of Playground Sports
Get PDFPlayground games play a very vital role in child development, but they have been shown to present significant risks of injury, particularly concussion injuries. Supervisors of playground games or recreational sports may lack comprehensive knowledge of concussion protocols, potentially resulting in undiagnosed pediatric concussion, which can be critical to the child’s long-term health. This study aims to identify which playground games or recreational sports pose the highest risk for injury, specifically concussions, and highlights the importance of concussion prevention training for all school personnel to minimize potential health risks for children. The methodology involved the identification of injuries from playground and recreational activities in children aged 5 to 18 years old using the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) operated by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. A nine-year dataset was analyzed under a specific narrative to identify mechanisms of injury. The most frequent injuries resulting from playground and recreational activities included fractures (25.4%), strains and sprains (24.8%), contusions (12.6%), internal organ injuries (7.4%) and concussions (6.4%). Particularly for concussion injuries, 52% occurred during dodgeball and 32% during kickball. The primary mechanisms of injury identified were being struck by an object or another player (63.7%) and falls (26.7%). After analyzing the results, it is evident that implementing concussion protocols and prevention training for school personnel is indispensable. Although concussions did not rank as the leading injury, the 6.4% incidence rate still represents a significant number of children affected by this injury in these activities. Incorporating concussion protocols and training would increase supervisors’ awareness and understanding of the risks that may significantly reduce the likelihood of long-term health consequences in children
Using Gaussian Process Regression to Learn Thermodynamic Equations of State with Uncertainty Quantification
Get PDFThis study investigates the use of derivative-informed Gaussian Process (GP) models to estimate thermodynamic behavior across temperature and density by building a Helmholtz-based equation of state. Argon, a stable monatomic gas, was chosen as a case study within the vapor region. The GP model was trained using values of experimentally measurable properties found by taking first and second derivatives of the original potential function. Results show that while the GP model offered uncertainty quantification and informed thermodynamic behavior, it predicted values that deviated from the ground truth depending on the property. The model exhibited high confidence in regions with substantial error due to an over-reliance on the mean function. Further analysis revealed that the mean function dominated the predictions while the kernel function minimally contributed. Recommendations are provided to weaken the mean function and optimize the kernel hyperparameters
Building Neocolonial Foundations: The British Government and the Decolonization of the Gold Coast, 1948-1957
Get PDFIn this thesis, I examine the ways that the government of Great Britain attempted to create a pro-Western state in Ghana during the decolonization process, which spanned from the Accra Riots in 1948 to the finalization of independence in 1957, with Kwame Nkrumah’s election as president. Since Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain its independence, it provides the initial example illustrating how the British government during the decolonization process in sub-Saharan Africa tried to cultivate states that would align with their interests following independence. To achieve this goal, I will rely on primary sources from the British Foreign Office, Dominions Office, and the Commonwealth Office. Secondary sources will include historical analyses of Ghana’s independence to illustrate the role of the United Kingdom in exercising a form of neocolonial control in Ghana post-independence. An analysis of the evidence demonstrates that the British government sought a degree of control in Ghana in the years following independence. Furthermore, this work seeks to establish the United Kingdom’s trend of westernizing future independence processes for other British territories throughout Africa and elsewhere in its expansive empire. By examining the United Kingdom’s role in decolonizing the first sub-Saharan African nation to achieve independence, it becomes clear that Britain attempted to reapply this approach to other decolonizing nations. This research does not seek to take an original position on either Ghanaian independence or its significance in African affairs. Rather, this work seeks to apply paradigms previously identified by historians to new regions. Previous historians’ work on evaluating the importance of Ghana’s independence will be used to illustrate the effect impact the new nation had on the rest of the continent. Engaging with this scholarship is important since it further highlights the pro-Western positions that former British territories in West Africa assumed following independence
