James Simpson graduated with Honours at the University of Canberra’s conferral ceremony this week.
This is a picture he shared
I was fortunate to be on James’s supervision panel. I felt like this about his work for the year of his research.
James looked at the impact of rule change on water polo performance. He had an opportunity to attend a junior world championships in Greece to collect his primary data. He analysed games from an old rules world chamionship in 2014 as a benchmark for his investigation.
James concluded:
There is evidence of differences in tactical behaviour as a result of the player reduction rule in elite junior women’s water polo and that this investigation could form part of an exciting machine learning exploration to better inform tactical behaviour in water polo.
James has been recruited by the Malaysian Institute of Sport and I hope he will be able to explore his interest in machine learning there. My year with him encouraged me to think about a taxonomy of performance and the role evidence about new forms of game play might play in coach learning.
It enable me to share a joy in learning too.
