Can Fencers Bounce Back From Being Cut After Pools? (Pt. 2)

Post-conference update: This poster won 2nd place! 🥈

This post is a continuation from my previous post Can Fencers Bounce Back From Being Cut After Pools?. As I prepared that work to be presented at the CMU Sports Analytics Conference and the Midwest Sports Analytics Meeting, I made some small changes and even found some new results, which I’m excited to share in my poster below (click on it to expand):

A major change I made was switching the outcome variable (measure of performance) from event percentile to indicator (points scored minus points received). I felt that change in percentile wasn’t easily interpretable, whereas change in indicator points was. I could have also changed this metric to number of wins, but I felt like it wasn’t granular enough. Additionally, I realized I had enough data to look at the effect of being cut on Y-14 fencers fencing Cadet and Cadet fencers fencing Junior, so I could see how the effects varied across age groups! The results, however, remained the same. Finally, I calculated the minimum detectable effect (MDE), which allowed me to rule out effects larger than three indicator points, meaning that if there is an effect, it is likely to be very small.