A game changer takes on cricket’s statistical problem
Jehangir Amjad has done something few people can: He found a way to combine his favorite sport with his work. A longtime cricket enthusiast and player, he’s currently tackling an important statistical problem in the game — how to declare a winner when a match must end prematurely, due to weather or other circumstances. Given cricket’s global popularity, and the fact that matches can last for several hours, it’s a problem of great interest to fans and players alike. For Amjad, it’s also a project that incorporates his passion for operations research. And the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) was the perfect place for him to explore it. Amjad took a circuitous path to MIT. Born and raised in Pakistan, he received a scholarship to complete his last two years of high school at the Red Cross Nordic United World College in Norway. Along with the school’s 200 other students, who...