Pickleball: Comparing Reliability in Player Ratings for Doubles vs Singles Matches

Paired Data
Using matched pairs to determine a difference in mean reliability scores for pickleball player ratings in doubles vs singles matches.
Authors
Affiliation

Faith Rhinehart

St. Lawrence University

Jessica Chapman

St. Lawrence University

Robin Lock

St. Lawrence University

Ivan Ramler

St. Lawrence University

Published

July 10, 2025

Background to Pickleball Video

If you are unfamiliar with Pickleball, please watch this video:

Introduction to Module

Pickleball is a fast-paced sport blending tennis, badminton, and ping-pong, played with paddles and a plastic ball on a small court. College tournaments feature singles, doubles, and mixed doubles in a best-of-three format, emphasizing strategy, teamwork, and precision. Player performance is often tracked using the DUPR (Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating) system, which rates skill from 2.000 to 8.000 based on match results, opponent strength, and recent play. A Reliability Score (1–100%) reflects how accurate a rating is, with 60%+ considered dependable.

The pickleBall dataset features data from the NCPA (National Collegiate Pickleball Association) of male and female players in 2024. Variables include characteristics such as name and sex. Other variables included the overrall, singles, doubles, and mixed rating and the overall, singles, doubles, and mixed reliability score. The relevant variables for this specific module are doubles reliability and singles reliability.

This could serve as an in class activity and should take roughly a half an hour to complete.

Students will gain experience performing matched pairs t-test and confidence intervals.

For this activity, students will need to use a statistical software capable of plotting data.

Students are expected to understand the concept of hypothesis forming, rejecting hypothesis, confidence intervals.

Data

The pickleBall data contains ratings and reliability scores for collegiate matches.

Download data: pickleBall.csv

Variable Descriptions

NCPA male and female players (380 cases with 12 variables) data:

Variable Description
First Name First name of player
Last Name Last name of player
Overall Overall rating
Overall Reliability Overall Reliability score (percent expressed as a decimal)
Singles Singles rating
Singles Reliability Singles Reliability score (percent expressed as a decimal)
Doubles Doubles rating
Doubles Reliability Doubles Reliability score (percent expressed as a decimal)
Mixed Mixed rating
Mixed Reliability Mixed Reliability score (percent expressed as a decimal)
Sex Sex of player

Data Source

Details on the data are available in the associated SCORE Data Repository entry.

Materials

Students should gain an understanding of matched pairs t-test to compare mean reliability scores for singles and doubles ratings.