The Eyes Have It!: Using Human-Selected Features for Predicting Athletes' Performance

Predicting athletes' performance has relied mostly on statistical data. Besides the traditional data, various types of data, including video, have become available. However, it is challenging to use them for deep learning, especially when the size of the athletes' dataset is small. This research proposes a feature-selection strategy based on the criteria used by insightful people, which could improve ML performance. Our ML model employs features selected by people who correctly evaluated the athletes' future performance. We tested out a strategy to predict the LPGA players' next day performance using their interview video. We asked study participants to predict the players' next day score after watching the interviews and asked why. Using combined features of the facial landmarks' movements, derived from the participants, and meta-data showed a better F1-score than using each feature separately. This study suggests that the human-in-the-loop model could improve algorithms' performance with small-dataset.