Moneyball Academy: Training Camp- A Review
Wharton Global Youth Program has several available undergraduate summer courses. Here’s a look into one of them.
Over the summer, I attended Moneyball Academy: Training Camp; a selective online course under the Wharton Global Youth Programme, offered by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Taught by Wharton Professor Adi Wyner and guest lecturers, the Moneyball Academy: Training Camp is a one-week introduction to statistics and coding in the programming language R through a sports lens.
Going into the programme, students were required to set up R Studio and establish some basic knowledge about R so that they could better grasp the material that would be shared during class.
Each day began with a 2-hour lecture on theoretical Statistics by Professor Wyner. During these sessions, we tackled material such as the Simpson’s Paradox, the Empirical Rule for Data, Standard Units and the Normal Curve, Linear Regression, and so on. This part of the day was easily the most comprehensive, as every single concept was explained through real-life sports data. For example, we answered the age-old question of ‘Which side should a goalkeeper jump?’ using 3 ways of calculating probability; (statisticians found that staying in the centre was historically a goalie’s best bet, but when psychologists found out that most goalies have historically made the right decision and stayed in the very centre, I hear this sparked a little upset in their field of studies).
Using sports verbatim at each stage of the concept made it almost implausibly easier to understand every single Module. It is actually quite vexing how the source of the data in some situations can bring about drastic changes in how quickly and how well you understand something.
The lecture was followed by an hour for lunch, during which we could take a break or hang out in mini-Zooms with teaching assistants- grad or undergrad students at the University of Pennsylvania. Lunch was fun because of being notably less formal- doubts were cleared and online games played.
Post this came my favourite part of the day- Guest Speaker Meetings, which were incredibly informative and exciting. Moneyball is known of for its Guest Speakers, and it became clear why when we were acquaintanced daily with the likes of Chris Collinsworth and Kathy Evans; all sports statistics royalty who were deep in the world of Global Leagues and Data Analysis in their respective fields. Although we had only an hour with them, the information and advice they shared was extremely crisp and realistic.
This followed a couple of hours of watching coding lectures and going through syntax notes asynchronously. Each lecture was accompanied by a problem set that tested what you had learn and required you to put in a but more thought that you normally would. The experience of figuring stuff out yourself and implementing it to obtain raw data arranged in Ridge plots or Violin plots gave me confidence and motivation. Afterwards, we reviewed code with Eric Eager, another professor, and cleared coding questions with our TA’s, who were the most helpful people ever.
The only regrettable thing that can be said about Moneyball was that it lasted only 5 days. Nevertheless, everything about the session was designed in a manner meant to make students feel comfortable and confident. The most invaluable takeaway has been, for me, my interaction with industry experts and fellow students from across the globe. The opportunity to work closely with people from different cultures and receive advice, both in career and life, from people who have seen so much of each is an experience that each and every student should have.