The Joint Mathematics Meeting is the major mathematics conference in the USA, taking place in early January and organized by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America and a few other technical organizations.  Among the many sessions at the JMM is one on Mathematics and Sports, which returns for another year. (I don’t know how long the session has been at the JMM, but it’s been there at least five years.)  Here is the link to the MAA Mathematics and Sports session.

This year’s session is varied, with presentations about basketball, baseball, golf, volleyball, lacrosse, table tennis, and – I am not making this up – a game of fetch with a Welsh corgi.  Some of the presentations use sport examples to illustrate mathematical and physical principles for the classroom.  Others serve as motivation for the use of more involved mathematical algorithms, such as Monte Carlo simulations, artificial neural networks, and optimal path planning.  I would probably be most interested in the lacrosse prediction presentation by Glenn Sidle and his colleagues at NC State and the Virginia Military Institute.  Perhaps the presentation on a new linear formula for predicting win percentages in MLB, NFL, and NHL would be interesting.  That’s about it.

The 2015 JMM is in San Antonio the first full week of the year.  Here is the conference website.