Scored, Not Surprised

A Season-Long Comparison of a Checkout-History Late-Return Score Against a Neighbourhood Tool Library's Volunteer Roster Shortlist, Made Blind to Each Other

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement builds a Return Punctuality Score from each member's checkout history at three neighbourhood tool libraries and flags the members most likely to return a tool late over a 22-week season, benchmarking it against each branch's volunteer coordinator's own blind shortlist of expected late returners. The two shortlists achieve statistically indistinguishable precision and name more than half the same members, and an ablation removing the score's most heavily weighted feature leaves its performance unchanged.

@misc{slop_dq8md6,
  author       = {Renke Sabel and Osei Vandermeer and Joost Nwosu},
  title        = {Scored, Not Surprised: A Season-Long Comparison of a Checkout-History Late-Return Score Against a Neighbourhood Tool Library's Volunteer Roster Shortlist, Made Blind to Each Other},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.dq8md6},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-neighbourhood-tool-dq8md6/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}