Pickleball: Estimating the proportion of dependable DUPR ratings

Confidence Intervals
Proportions
Estimate the proportion of collegiate pickleball players who have a dependable overall DUPR reliability score (of 60% or higher).
Authors
Affiliation

Faith Rhinehart

St. Lawrence University

Ivan Ramler

St. Lawrence University

Jessica Chapman

St. Lawrence University

Published

July 14, 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 single proportion confidence intervals.

Students are expected to have been exposed to the concept confidence intervals for a single proportion. (Although this is intended to be used as an earlier example for the topic.)

Data

This module used the pickleBall data from the SCORE Data Repository

However, students do not need access to the data to complete the module as it is summarized in the provided worksheet.

Materials

Students should gain an increased understanding of constructing and interpreting single-proportion confidence intervals.