An Analysis of Texas High School Academic Competition Results, Part 5 - Miscellaneous

There’s a lot to analyze with the Texas high school academic UIL data set. Maybe I find it more interesting than others due to my personal experiences with these competitions.

Now, after examining some of the biggest topics associated with this data–including competitions, individuals, and schools–in a broad manner, there are some other things that don’t necessarily fall into these categories that I think are worth investigating.

Siblings

Let’s look at the performance of siblings. Maybe this topic only came to mind for me because I have brothers, on of who is my twin, but I think anyone can find something interesting on this matter.

Sibling Participation

rnk name_last name_first_pair n
1 Zhang Jim & Mark 24
2 Ballard Chance & Rance 22
3 Garcia Javier & Juan 20
4 Walter Collin & Lowell 20
5 Bass Brian & Michael 19
6 Fabre Guadalupe & Maria 19
7 Priest Alex & Chandler 18
8 Vicuna Bianca & Daniel 17
9 Gee Grace & John 16
10 Morris Jason & Ty 16
18 Elhabr Andrew & Anthony 13

Note: 1 # of total rows: 2,289

Admittedly, I am a bit disappointed to find that my twin brother and I are not at the very top of this list. Nonetheless, we are fairly near the top, so I can take some satisfaction in that. 1

I should note that the scraped data does not distinguish siblings, so I had to define criteria to do so. To be specific, the table above enforces the criteria that two people have the same last name, school, and city, and that they compete in the exact same competition–that is, a competition occurring in a given year and being of a same competition type and same competition level (as well as the same conference and competition area, if applicable). The numbers are inflated when not enforcing the criteria that the two people must have competed in the same competition type and level (nor conference and competition area), and even more so when throwing out the criteria for same year.

Sibling Performance

Participation in competitions is one thing, but what about sibling performance? Let’s use the same metric used elsewhere for ranking performance–percent rank of scores summed across all records (prnk_sum)–and see which sibling pairs show up among the top.

rnk name_last name_first_pair n_bycomp n_defeat n_state prnk rnk_max
1 Priest Alex & Chandler 1,222 1,022 11 31.73 72
2 Fabre Guadalupe & Maria 1,348 1,078 14 30.31 76
3 Walter Collin & Lowell 1,074 768 16 29.99 80
4 Bass Brian & Michael 1,138 889 12 29.62 76
5 Gee Grace & John 896 711 10 26.28 64
6 Morris Jason & Ty 852 625 11 24.13 64
7 Patterson Ben & Jeremy 994 708 9 22.30 62
8 Alsup Jon & Mason 886 667 9 22.18 56
9 Vicuna Bianca & Daniel 1,056 653 3 21.39 68
10 Beavers Clay & Cody 902 696 8 20.71 52
17 Elhabr Andrew & Anthony 788 481 5 16.89 52

Note: 1 # of total rows: 1,787

It looks like the pairs at the top of these rankings based on score are fairly similar to the list of pairs competing most frequently. (This is not too surprising given that my choice of metric of ranking is based on a summed value that “rewards” volume of participation rather than per-competition performance.) Again, my twin brother and I appear near the top.

My High School

Even though I highlighted my high school (“CLEMENS”) in my examination of schools and looked at individual scores elsewhere, I did not look at other individuals that have gone to my school. Perhaps it is a bit egotistical, but I am interested in knowing how I compare with others that have attended my school (either before, with, or after me).

rnk name n prnk_sum prnk_mean n_defeat_sum n_defeat_mean n_advanced_sum
1 Land, Noah 17 13.67 0.80 447 26.29 14
2 Fulton, Chris 18 12.66 0.70 351 19.50 16
3 Gonzales, Gavyn 17 12.26 0.72 371 21.82 15
4 Elhabr, Andrew 15 9.87 0.66 296 19.73 11
5 Perry, Robert 15 8.75 0.58 249 16.60 10
6 Garcia, Jon 9 7.94 0.88 259 28.78 6
7 Nesser, Austin 17 7.93 0.47 231 13.59 15
8 Elhabr, Anthony 13 7.76 0.60 216 16.62 10
9 Guyott, David 9 5.37 0.60 157 17.44 7
10 Baker, Ian 10 5.32 0.53 185 18.50 8

Note: 1 # of total rows: 95

Alas, although my twin brother and I did not rank among the very top of the siblings by participation and performance, we do appear among the top when evaluating only people from my high school. In my opinion, the sample size isn’t so small that this achievement is trivial.

Wrap-Up

I think all I’ve done here is more investigation of my personal performance, so I’ll spare the reader any more of my egotistical exporation. And, with that said, I think this is a good point to bring an end to my investigation of Texas high school academic UIL competitions.

1. I don’t explicitly try to filter for twins only, but it’s reasonable to believe that many, if not most, are twins. ^