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Which Ball is the Roundest? - A Suggested Tournament Stability Index

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  • Lundh Torbjörn

    (Mathematical Sciences at Chalmers and Göteborg University)

Abstract

All sports have components of randomness that cause the "best" individual or team not to win every game. According to many spectators this uncertainty is part of the charm when following a competition or a match. Have different sports more or less of this unpredictability? We suggest here a general measure, a tournament stability index, together with its associated p-value which we denote the "coin-tossing-index." These indexes are aimed to quantify the randomness factor for different tournaments, and different sports. As an illustration we exemplify and discuss these measures for basketball, squash, and soccer. Some additional results will also be given on a few tournaments in ice-hockey, and handball. Furthermore, we discuss a couple of combinatorial optimization questions that turned up on the way.

Suggested Citation

  • Lundh Torbjörn, 2006. "Which Ball is the Roundest? - A Suggested Tournament Stability Index," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 2(3), pages 1-23, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:2:y:2006:i:3:n:1
    DOI: 10.2202/1559-0410.1005
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Walter C. Neale, 1964. "The Peculiar Economics of Professional Sports," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 78(1), pages 1-14.
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    3. Brad R. Humphreys, 2002. "Alternative Measures of Competitive Balance in Sports Leagues," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 3(2), pages 133-148, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. S R Clarke & J M Norman & C B Stride, 2009. "Criteria for a tournament: the World Professional Snooker Championship," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(12), pages 1670-1673, December.
    2. Scarf, Philip & Yusof, Muhammad Mat & Bilbao, Mark, 2009. "A numerical study of designs for sporting contests," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 198(1), pages 190-198, October.

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