Ranking Handball Teams from Statistical Strength Estimation
Applications
2023-07-14 v1 Methodology
Abstract
In this work, we present a methodology to estimate the strength of handball teams using a statistical method. We propose the use of the Conway-Maxwell-Poisson distribution to model the number of goals scored by a team as a flexible discrete distribution which can handle situations of non equi-dispersion. From its parameters, we derive a mathematical formula to determine the strength of a team. We propose a ranking based on the estimated strengths to compare teams across different championships. Applied to female handball club data from European competitions over the season 2022/2023, we show that our new ranking can have an echo in real sports events and the results.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2307.06754,
title = {Ranking Handball Teams from Statistical Strength Estimation},
author = {Florian Felice},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.06754},
year = {2023}
}