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A rank-invariant clustering of variables is introduced that is based on the predictive strength between groups of variables, i.e., two groups are assigned a high similarity if the variables in the first group contain high predictive…
Although academic research on the 'hot hand' effect (in particular, in sports, especially in basketball) has been going on for more than 30 years, it still remains a central question in different areas of research whether such an effect…
League competition is investigated using random processes and scaling techniques. In our model, a weak team can upset a strong team with a fixed probability. Teams play an equal number of head-to-head matches and the team with the largest…
Increasing investments into various dimensions of sports draw a significant amount of attention to the way these resources are being managed and which organizations achieve development goals with higher efficiency. This paper reviews the…
We introduce a Bayesian mean-value approach for ranking all college football teams using only win-loss data. This approach is unique in that the prior distribution necessary to handle undefeated and winless teams is calculated…
As teamwork becomes ever-more important in a new age of remote work, it is critical to develop metrics to quantitatively evaluate how effective teams are. This is especially true with mixed-modality teams, such as those that include a human…
Stochastic optimization algorithms have been successfully applied in several domains to find optimal solutions. Because of the ever-growing complexity of the integrated systems, novel stochastic algorithms are being proposed, which makes…
This paper applies existing and new approaches to study trends in the performance of elite athletes over time. We study both track and field scores of men and women athletes on a yearly basis from 2001 to 2019, revealing several trends and…
It seems that one cannot find many papers relating entropy to sport competitions. Thus, in this paper, I use (i) the Shannon intrinsic entropy ($S$) as an indicator of "teams sporting value" (or "competition performance") and (ii) the…
Ranking is used in sport leagues to determine a champion and/or to decide on promotion/relegation of teams. Arguably, the best known ranking method relies on scores obtained by cumulating the points associated with the wins and the draws of…
We propose utilizing match-level suspense and surprise - which capture the entertainment utility created by competitive balance and outcome uncertainty for sports spectators - as alternative policy targets for league organizers and…
We consider the problem of estimating `preference' or `strength' parameters in three-way comparison experiments, each composed of a series of paired comparisons, but where only the single `preferred' or `strongest' candidate is known in…
We analyze how coaching strategies affect goal difference and home win probabilities using hand-coded Serie A match commentary (2011/12--2013/14). Our dataset captures in-game dynamics, referee actions, and team behavior. Applying…
This paper explores how semantic-space reasoning, traditionally used in computational linguistics, can be extended to tactical decision-making in team sports. Building on the analogy between texts and teams -- where players act as words and…
Tree-based methods are powerful nonparametric techniques in statistics and machine learning. However, their effectiveness, particularly in finite-sample settings, is not fully understood. Recent applications have revealed their surprising…
Discussions on outstanding---positively and/or negatively---athletes are common practice. The rapidly grown amount of collected sports data now allow to support such discussions with state of the art statistical methodology. Given a…
We present an extensive statistical analysis of the results of all sports competitions in five major sports leagues in England and the United States. We characterize the parity among teams by the variance in the winning fraction from…
Health metrics from wrist-worn devices demand an automatic dominant hand prediction to keep an accurate operation. The prediction would improve reliability, enhance the consumer experience, and encourage further development of healthcare…
Scouting is a major part of talent acquisition for any professional sports team. In the National Hockey League (NHL), the market for scouting is set by the NHLs Central Scouting Service which develops a ranking of draft eligible players. In…
Shooting location is a core indicator of offensive style in invasion sports. Existing basketball shot-chart analyses often use spatial information for descriptive visualization, location-based efficiency modeling, or clustering players into…