Harry Estreich

    MPhil Candidate, Sports Data Science

    • Project: Statistical Modelling in Sprint Kayak
    • Partner Organisation: Paddle Australia
    • MPhil Student at QUT
    • Supervisors: Associate Professor Paul Wu, Dr Edgar Santos Fernandez, Dr Mark Osbourne, Dr Nicola Bullock

    Harry is a Master’s Student at QUT in the Centre for Data Science. He graduated from QUT in 2021 with a Bachelor of Mathematics (Statistics) and Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science). Through his work as Research Assistant in late 2021/early 2022 with CDS and Paddle Australia, he progressed through to a Master of Philosophy starting in late 2022.

    What made you interested in this project and/or program?

    I grew up playing a large variety of sports, particularly cricket, basketball and swimming. From this initial exposure to these sports, I noticed I was always drawn to the statistical side of these sports. This led me to apply to QUT to do a Bachelor of Mathematics (Statistics). When the opportunity to combine my skills in statistics and my enjoyment of sport I jumped at the chance.

    What research question are you looking forward to exploring?

    Through my work as a Research Assistant, I took a simple set involving training performance times and turned it into an extensive predictive model that could be used to track and predict true performance times in a sprint kayak athlete, regardless of the training conditions (weather, water variability). I’m looking forward to extending this project to ensure that this project has a practical usage at Paddle Australia. Additionally, from my exposure to the other data sets at Paddle Australia, I’m looking to investigating further avenues for statistical modelling from their detailed databases.

    Fun fact about yourself?

    In my spare time I like to play pickup basketball and go for weekend rides around Brisbane.