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October 2016
Most people don’t follow their junior-high science fair project much past its due date, but recent graduate Zachary Knowlton did. In early 2004 he and his dad created a formula that correctly predicted that NBA player Kevin Garnett would be that year’s league MVP.
“Ever since then I’ve loved sports and stats,” says Knowlton. That love led him to the BYU statistics program, from which he recently graduated with a master’s degree. A key part of Knowlton’s graduate work was focused on predicting the performance of BYU football players.
Much of his football research, mentored by statistics professor Gilbert Fellingham, was based on a model put forward by statisticians Chris White and Scott Berry. BYU researchers added coaches’ rankings to the White-Berry model. “We think it’s pretty cool, and hopefully it helps the team,” says Knowlton.
Knowlton is grateful for his mentor. “I am a statistician who loves sports. Knowing that Professor Fellingham has the expertise and seeing that coaches trust him to help was awesome. I have no idea how I would have learned so much without his help.”
Related story: https://news.byu.edu/news/statistics-mvp-grad-student-rates-college-athletes
Richard Palmer had no intention of attending BYU until he traveled from his home state of Washington to visit campus one day during his high school years. In Provo, he got the distinct impression that he would attend the university and even live in a particular on-campus apartment complex that was then still under construction.
One question and two classes is all it took to change one student's major before he had a mentored student learning opportunity at BYU to try and solve the mystery of Australia’s Veevers Crater.
Mathematics student Jonathan Hales says it was mentored learning that helped him develop a method that researchers can use to analyze equations.
