Author: pendleton.87

First Year at THE Ohio State University

At the end of my first year at the THE Ohio State University I have to sit back and reflect on my year. Thinking back on how much I’ve changed since first coming into the year in August to now. Starting off as an engineering major and discovering that was something that I would never want to do really helped me change my expectations for myself and the future. It really allowed me to reassess what I wanted from my future and how I valued happiness versus monetary stability. As well exploring helped me find a new passion in economics with which I’ve changed my major to.

Additionally, I’ve been able to make new friends especially through the scholars program. Getting to meet all the different people in my community and getting to know them better throughout the year helped change my world perspective as well getting to make real deep friendships. Many of the members of my scholars group helped me mature over the year as we tackled the year’s challenges together. Without my scholars group I would be wildly different today.

Super Smash Bros Stats

by Jack Pendleton, pendleton.87@osu.edu, Economics

My spring semester project intends to analyze player and character placements across major tournaments in 2019 and early 2020. This falls under the Original Inquiry of the Honors and Scholars G.O.A.L.S. as I researched and analyzed data in order to procure information about the smash scene in the last year.

I originally came up with this idea because of my passion for the game, as well as noticing an overall lack of statistics provided for the game. Due to the statistics for the game coming entirely from fans there is an overall lack of information when compared to other Esports such as Overwatch which has its own league that keeps track of important statistics and player data. I worked on my own to complete this project so that I could share it with the community. I worked on the project throughout the semester gathering the data of tournaments that had been played in 2019 in the first weeks of the semester. As tournaments in 20202 were played I added them to my spreadsheet. Unfortunately, the majority of major tournaments that would have been played were cancelled due to COVID-19 resulting in the decreased quantity of data to analyze. After I got all my data I really just wen ahead and found the parameters that I was interested all in one day.

The results of my project were quite enlightening about the state of the top ten players as well as the differences in placement across multiple characters in the game. As can be seen in this list of average placements as well as the standard deviation of placement the number one player Hungrybox shows clear dominance as the number one while being extremely consistent throughout the year. In addition one is able to see separation between the upper half and lower half of players for the most part. With the upper top players for the most part averaging close to 4 while those on the fringe of the top 10 averaging more around 6.

In addition when analyzing the stats for the most played characters we also see a bit of interesting data. The most alluring to me is the very low average placement by Jigglypuff, but with a much higher standard deviation. The thing that makes this which is not reflected in the data is that the placements for that character, unlike others, is not following the standard distribution but rather follows a bimodal distribution with Hungrybox, being the only top Jigglypuff player with his results being evened out with the other Jigglypuff players who do not place in the middle spots but only in the 9 and 10 area.

Further we see things that fans of the community would mostly expect with higher tier characters placing higher as well as seeing more play and placements in the top spots of tournaments. One  suprising thing would be the higher placements of Captain Falcon players in the 2019 season as compared to his place on the tier list. This may be explained by a break out year for Captain Falcon main Wizzrobe but the lower standard deviation would imply that Falcon players as whole seemed to have a favorable year.

Overall this really helped enhance my understanding of the placements of players and characters for the 2019 season as well as giving me a taste of how to do my own research. By pushing me to do something I might not normally do this project has enhanced my urge to seek out answers on my own rather than wait for others to gather the information. This project has also given me a look into gathering data for Esports which is a field that I wish to work in after graduation.

Spring Semester Project

For the Scholars Spring Semester Project I would like to focus on one of my own personal passions in life, Super Smash Bros Melee. I’d like to take a look at the true level of character diversity and the level of placements for each individual character. To do this I would look at the top 32 placements of various tournaments over the last year as well as keeping on top of events headed into the 2020 season. This would follow under the original inquiry part of the G.O.A.L.S. as I would be researching an aspect of the game that is not well documented up to this point. I plan to start work over winter break, my first step is to set the rules of how I will weigh each placement, whether I consider secondary characters, etc. The second step is to construct a list of the tournaments that I believe are of a high enough skill level to include in my list of placements. I imagine I will complete both of these steps within the first two weeks of the spring semester.

Columbus To Do List: Part Two

To continue our pizza adventures Chris, Xander and I set off not to long after the first, to a place south of campus called Yellow Brick Pizza. It was absolutely amazing, after the first experience left us a little underwhelmed Yellow Brick Pizza popped us right back up and got us excited for our little pizza tour once again. The service was impeccable and the pizza was up there with the best. With what I thought was a great mix between the three parts of the pizza, the dough, the sauce, and the cheese. None of the three were out of balance with the others and it made for a nice Monday night for the three of us.
The next weekend we were off again this time to the North Market to a pizza place we had all tried once before, Sarefino’s. Though the first time we had come by the pizza had been a little extra greasy this time it was just right. As well the whole environment of the North Market just makes it extra fun to hang out with our friends as we all sit together and eat our ‘za. We are already planning on heading back to the North Market again next semester so Xander can get his beloved sandwich.
Our next experience was about as close to campus as you can get at Aracri Pizzeria. We went after game day and it was PACKED. Regardless service was quick and we were able to get our pizza surprisingly quick for how many people were going through the line at the time. Though this pizza didn’t measure up to some of the other places on our list with nothing really standing out other than a general lack of taste. Regardless it’s very close so if someone was desperate for some off campus pizza while in their dorm room that is where I would have to recommend going.


Finally we walked up to Mikey’s Late Night Slice. My expectations weren’t very high after walking in to the store. With seemingly only one woman working and the only place to eat being an old and banged up counter I was prepared to end our adventure on a low note. However, after I bit into my slice all my expectations got blown out of the water. This was in my opinion they best pizza out of all the places we had been thus far. The single woman who was working also made decent conversation and was very welcoming of us. This all mixed with the proximity to where our dorm is almost certainly makes Mikey’s Late Night Slice the best place for us to get pizza in the future and certainly a worthy end to our culinary odyssey.


This was a ton of fun and I’m glad I had two partners all the way through the end of the project to hang out with and enjoy each place with. We aren’t planning on being done with the pizza of Columbus just yet and plan to continue next semester. Anyone who also wants to shoot for the stars in the pizza galaxy that is Columbus honestly just go for it. There are winners and there are no real losers because at the end of the day you are still eating some pizza with your homies and that’s never a bad experience.

Columbus To Do List

Jack Pendleton
Columbus To Do List
For my Columbus To Do List project Chris Scott and I decided to tackle the pizza of Columbus and compare the experiences of each place alongside the others to determine what place has the best pizza. The journey started with scouring through the list of possible pizza places and cross referencing them against another list of recommended pizza places to see which ones were most highly ranked across both. Though I’m not looking forward to any place specifically cause I have not heard of any of these pizza places, I am excited to see what Columbus has to offer and spend time with one of my close friends while exploring the city.
We ended up heading to OH Pizza and Brew in downtown Columbus which is just off High and Broad. It was a bit of an adventure finding the spot as we accidentally crossed to the wrong side of the street twice after we got off at the closest bus stop to pizzeria. Once inside we seated ourselves and ordered a pepperoni pizza and a small basket of wings. The pizza wasn’t exactly stand out as it tasted just like most small pizza places however the wings were outstanding. I still can’t decide if it was because I was hungry or because the wings were that good but those wings have been on my mind for days. The meat melted straight off the bone with just the right amount of crunch to the skin of the wing. Overall it was a pretty positive experience and I’m glad we made the trip down yet I couldn’t recommend it to anyone that doesn’t live within 10 minutes of OH Pizza and Brew as it wasn’t phenomenal.

Mentor Meeting

I met with both of my mentors, Declan and Evan. We met at the Terabyte Cafe inside of the 18th Avenue library on September 26th at around 2:15 for roughly 15 minutes. I hadn’t interacted with my mentors really at all before this meeting so it was nice to meet up with them. We talked a lot about living in dorms and on campus which gave me a bit of insight into what things I can come to expect. It was a lot of fun as well I learned that both of my mentors have changed their major at some point which is something that I’m currently struggling with on my own. I feel a lot more comfortable reaching out to my mentor in the future as I really felt like I got to know them more through this.

 

Reflections on my first weeks

After my first two weeks here I feel a lot more at home then when I first walked through the doors of my dorm. Welcome week really did make campus feel smaller than it is getting to meet a bunch of new people that I see in classes and around campus as well as providing a ton of free food. My classes luckily have been easier than I thought they would be yet still quite a bit more difficult than what high school was like. Although this is offset by the amount of free time I have now to study and work on my own rather than being in class for eight hours a day. I really thought these weeks would be harder than they are and that I might miss the world of high school just a bit more than I do but honestly I love being at college and am looking forward to see what comes next on my journey. The Scholars program has also been great. I’ve enjoyed getting to meet and spend time with some of the other amazing people that are in the program as well as getting to do fun things like explore Columbus with all of them.

Year in Review

[ “Year in Review”  is where you should reflect on the past year and show how you have evolved as a person and as a student.  You may want to focus on your growth in a particular area (as a leader, scholar, researcher, etc.) or you may want to talk about your overall experience over the past year.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]