Related papers: Analyzing and Forecasting Success in the Men's Ice…
We develop a new statistical model to analyse time-varying ranking data. The model can be used with a large number of ranked items, accommodates exogenous time-varying covariates and partial rankings, and is estimated via the maximum…
Many complex phenomena, from the selection of traits in biological systems to hierarchy formation in social and economic entities, show signs of competition and heterogeneous performance in the temporal evolution of their components, which…
From the viewpoint of networks, a ranking system for players or teams in sports is equivalent to a centrality measure for sports networks, whereby a directed link represents the result of a single game. Previously proposed network-based…
We study a stochastic process that mimics single-game elimination tournaments. In our model, the outcome of each match is stochastic: the weaker player wins with upset probability q<=1/2, and the stronger player wins with probability 1-q.…
Individual sports competitions provide a natural setting for examining the relative importance of talent and luck/chance in achieving success. The belief that success is primarily due to individual abilities and hard work rather than…
Ranking is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the human society. By clicking the web pages of Forbes, you may find all kinds of rankings, such as world's most powerful people, world's richest people, top-paid tennis stars, and so on and so forth.…
A hockey player's plus-minus measures the difference between goals scored by and against that player's team while the player was on the ice. This measures only a marginal effect, failing to account for the influence of the others he is…
Evaluating the overall ability of players in the National Hockey League (NHL) is a difficult task. Existing methods such as the famous "plus/minus" statistic have many shortcomings. Standard linear regression methods work well when player…
We study the effects of randomness on competitions based on an elementary random process in which there is a finite probability that a weaker team upsets a stronger team. We apply this model to sports leagues and sports tournaments, and…
The study aims to compare different designs for the World Men's Handball Championships. This event, organised in every two years, has adopted four hybrid formats consisting of knockout and round-robin stages in recent decades, including a…
This paper takes a different approach to evaluating face-offs in ice hockey. Instead of looking at win percentages, the de facto measure of successful face-off takers for decades, focuses on the game events following the face-off and how…
The presence of momentum in sports, where the outcome of a previous event affects a following event, is a belief often held by fans, and has been the subject of statistical study for many sports. This paper investigates the presence and…
Competitor rating systems for head-to-head games are typically used to measure playing strength from game outcomes. Ratings computed from these systems are often used to select top competitors for elite events, for pairing players of…
Predicting the outcome of sports events is a hard task. We quantify this difficulty with a coefficient that measures the distance between the observed final results of sports leagues and idealized perfectly balanced competitions in terms of…
Any collection can be ranked. Sports and games are common examples of ranked systems: players and teams are constantly ranked using different methods. The statistical properties of rankings have been studied for almost a century in a…
We present a new way of estimation of the role of chance in achieving success, by comparing the empirical data from 100-meter dash competitions (one of the sports disciplines with the most stringent controls of external randomness), with…
Ranking athletes by their performance in competitions and tournaments is common in every popular sport and has significant benefits that contribute to both the organization and strategic aspects of competitions. Although rankings are…
In this paper, we examine team ball sports to investigate how the likelihood of weaker teams winning against stronger ones, referred to as underdog achievement, is influenced by inherent randomness factors that affect match outcomes in such…
The availability of massive data about sports activities offers nowadays the opportunity to quantify the relation between performance and success. In this study, we analyze more than 6,000 games and 10 million events in six European leagues…
Success in sports is a complex phenomenon that has only garnered limited research attention. In particular, we lack a deep scientific understanding of success in sports like tennis and the factors that contribute to it. Here, we study the…