I received the following call for abstracts to the 2014 AMS/MAA Joint Mathematics Meeting to be held in Baltimore on 15-18 January.  The JMM has had a Math and Sports session for a couple of years now, and they are doing it again this year.  The abstracts are for 15-minute talks on current research and are due on 17 September.

Here is the full call:

The expanding availability of play-by-play statistics and video-based spatial data, for professional and some collegiate sports, is leading to innovative kinds of research, using techniques from various areas of the mathematical sciences. By modeling the outcome distributions in certain situations, researchers can develop new metrics for player or team performance in various aspects of a sport, comparing actual results to expected values. Such work often has implications for strategic game management and personnel evaluation. Classic areas of study, such as tournament design, ranking methodology, forecasting future performance, insight into rare or record events, and physics-based analysis, also remain of interest. This session will include both presentations of original research and expository talks; topics related to the use of sports applications in curriculum are welcome. With a broad audience in mind, all talks are requested to be accessible to mathematics majors. Undergraduates and their mentors are particularly encouraged to submit abstracts for consideration.

To get an idea of the papers which are presented at this conference, here are links to Session I and Session II of the Mathematics and Sports sessions from the 2013 JMM.

Thanks to Professors Drew Pasteur and John David for sending this notice to me.