Neil Watson will present the Department of Statistical Sciences seminar with a talk entitled, "Decision support for performance analysis in Rugby Union: A comparison of regression-based feature selection methods"

Abstract: We examine the validity of key performance indicators as determinants of team success. We place particular emphasis on the challenge of developing parsimonious models that attain a high degree of predictive accuracy and low variability across a variety of combinations of sample size and number of predictors.  Two penalised methods are contrasted with augmented regression-based stepwise approaches and traditional stepwise approaches. We critically evaluate the utility of each approach in selecting variables to model team success.