Recently, Upper Sixth student, Lucy Micallef took part in the RSS Statistics in Sports competition. In the competition, participants had to consider the likelihood of success of different individuals in the mean's and women's singles at Wimbledon 2025 against the voting habits of the other participating mathematicians. The competition, run by the Royal Statistical Society, is open to academics, early career researchers, industry professionals and those with an interest in quantitative analysis in sports.
Each participant got ten imaginary tokens, which they had to invest in the different players. Students then gained points based on the prize money won by the players in Wimbledon and the total number of tokens invested by the all participants.
Notre Dame are proud to say that Lucy won the School Student award in the competition. Dr Jess Hargreaves, the Vice-Chair wrote to Lucy, 'This year we had a record number of entries for the competition, with many entries from students at schools and colleges. The judges particularly commented on the clear description of methodology and the interesting ideas that you had implemented. Congratulations! You are clearly a talented mathematician, and we wish you all the best for the future.'
Lucy reflected on her time in the competition:
'In deciding my plan, I initially calculated the fractions of the prize money for players who reach different levels compared to the winner. I found that, if I invested one token in each, the total investment in the runner-up would have to be approximately double the total investment in the winner for it to be more worth investing in the runner-up. Similarly, the total investment in any player who went out in the third round would have to be approximately twenty times the total investment in the winner for it to be worth it. This allowed me to disregard the possibility of voting for players likely to be out earlier in the competition by considering that such a significant difference in total investment is unlikely. I then considered the individual players and their chance of achieving a given place. This led me to find that there was one favourite to win the women’s, but equal chances between two favourites to win the men’s. Thus, I decided to invest two tokens in the favourite for the women’s and one token each in the two favourites for the men. I then split my remaining tokens amongst other top players.
I found this competition was a fascinating opportunity to use my statistical knowledge in a completely new way and different way, considering different scenarios and probabilities to decide how best to invest my tokens.'
Huge well done Lucy!
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