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This paper addresses the item ranking problem with associate covariates, focusing on scenarios where the preference scores can not be fully explained by covariates, and the remaining intrinsic scores, are sparse. Specifically, we extend the…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-15 Jianqing Fan , Jikai Hou , Mengxin Yu

The Bradley-Terry-Luce (BTL) model is a benchmark model for pairwise comparisons between individuals. Despite recent progress on the first-order asymptotics of several popular procedures, the understanding of uncertainty quantification in…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-08-11 Chao Gao , Yandi Shen , Anderson Y. Zhang

We study the ranking of individuals, teams, or objects, based on pairwise comparisons between them, using the Bradley-Terry model. Estimates of rankings within this model are commonly made using a simple iterative algorithm first introduced…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-08-16 M. E. J. Newman

We consider the problem of learning the qualities of a collection of items by performing noisy comparisons among them. Following the standard paradigm, we assume there is a fixed "comparison graph" and every neighboring pair of items in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-13 Julien M. Hendrickx , Alex Olshevsky , Venkatesh Saligrama

This paper concerns with statistical estimation and inference for the ranking problems based on pairwise comparisons with additional covariate information such as the attributes of the compared items. Despite extensive studies, few prior…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-03-26 Jianqing Fan , Jikai Hou , Mengxin Yu

In this paper, we study a popular method for inference of the Bradley-Terry model parameters, namely the MM algorithm, for maximum likelihood estimation and maximum a posteriori probability estimation. This class of models includes the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-12-29 Milan Vojnovic , Seyoung Yun , Kaifang Zhou

Traditional statistical inference on ordinal comparison data results in an overall ranking of objects, e.g., from best to worst, with each object having a unique rank. However, ranks of some objects may not be statistically distinguishable.…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-08-27 Michael Pearce , Elena A. Erosheva

With the advent of highly capable instruction-tuned neural language models, benchmarking in natural language processing (NLP) is increasingly shifting towards pairwise comparison leaderboards, such as LMSYS Arena, from traditional global…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-24 Georgii Levtsov , Dmitry Ustalov

A common problem in machine learning is to rank a set of n items based on pairwise comparisons. Here ranking refers to partitioning the items into sets of pre-specified sizes according to their scores, which includes identification of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-01-08 Reinhard Heckel , Max Simchowitz , Kannan Ramchandran , Martin J. Wainwright

A preference order or ranking aggregated from pairwise comparison data is commonly understood as a strict total order. However, in real-world scenarios, some items are intrinsically ambiguous in comparisons, which may very well be an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-31 Qianqian Xu , Jiechao Xiong , Xinwei Sun , Zhiyong Yang , Xiaochun Cao , Qingming Huang , Yuan Yao

This paper considers ranking inference of $n$ items based on the observed data on the top choice among $M$ randomly selected items at each trial. This is a useful modification of the Plackett-Luce model for $M$-way ranking with only the top…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-01-09 Jianqing Fan , Zhipeng Lou , Weichen Wang , Mengxin Yu

This paper proposes a Bayesian model to compare multiple algorithms on multiple data sets, on any metric. The model is based on the Bradley-Terry model, that counts the number of times one algorithm performs better than another on different…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-18 Jacques Wainer

In this paper, we address the top-$K$ ranking problem with a monotone adversary. We consider the scenario where a comparison graph is randomly generated and the adversary is allowed to add arbitrary edges. The statistician's goal is then to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-21 Yuepeng Yang , Antares Chen , Lorenzo Orecchia , Cong Ma

This paper studies the performance of the spectral method in the estimation and uncertainty quantification of the unobserved preference scores of compared entities in a general and more realistic setup. Specifically, the comparison graph…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-03-04 Jianqing Fan , Zhipeng Lou , Weichen Wang , Mengxin Yu

There are various parametric models for analyzing pairwise comparison data, including the Bradley-Terry-Luce (BTL) and Thurstone models, but their reliance on strong parametric assumptions is limiting. In this work, we study a flexible…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-09-29 Nihar B. Shah , Sivaraman Balakrishnan , Adityanand Guntuboyina , Martin J. Wainwright

Ranking items based on pairwise comparisons is common, from using match outcomes to rank sports teams to using purchase or survey data to rank consumer products. Statistical inference-based methods such as the Bradley-Terry model, which…

Physics and Society · Physics 2026-01-09 Sebastian Morel-Balbi , Alec Kirkley

Given a set of pairwise comparisons, the classical ranking problem computes a single ranking that best represents the preferences of all users. In this paper, we study the problem of inferring individual preferences, arising in the context…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-12-18 Rui Wu , Jiaming Xu , R. Srikant , Laurent Massoulié , Marc Lelarge , Bruce Hajek

Many applications, e.g. in content recommendation, sports, or recruitment, leverage the comparisons of alternatives to score those alternatives. The classical Bradley-Terry model and its variants have been widely used to do so. The…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-02-23 Julien Fageot , Sadegh Farhadkhani , Lê Nguyên Hoang , Oscar Villemaud

Given partially observed pairwise comparison data generated by the Bradley-Terry-Luce (BTL) model, we study the problem of top-$k$ ranking. That is, to optimally identify the set of top-$k$ players. We derive the minimax rate with respect…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-07-16 Pinhan Chen , Chao Gao , Anderson Y. Zhang

In this work, we leverage a generative data model considering comparison noise to develop a fast, precise, and informative ranking algorithm from pairwise comparisons that produces a measure of confidence on each comparison. The problem of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-24 Filipa Valdeira , Cláudia Soares