Birth month was shown to effect players’ rankings in professional hockey. The idea is that players born at the beginning of the year have a physical advantage as kids compared to those born later in the year. This grants them extra attention from their coaches, which results in their skill level snowballing over the years and an overrepresentation of players born early in the year in professional leagues. This effect is called the Relative Age Effect and has been documented in many fields, including academia.

Given that hockey is a team sport, we wanted to see what the data said for an individual sport: tennis.

Research question: “does the month of birth have any impact on the ranking of professional tennis players?”

Methodology: regression discontinuity design (RDD).

I completed this project with my classmates Johannes L. and Yera S.