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Parity and Predictability of Competitions
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Eli Ben-Naim
Published/Copyright:
October 10, 2006
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 season-end standings data and quantify the predictability of games by the frequency of upsets from game results data. We introduce a novel mathematical model in which the underdog team wins with a fixed upset probability. This model quantitatively relates the parity among teams with the predictability of the games, and it can be used to estimate the upset frequency from standings data.
Keywords: sports statistics; parity; predictability; upset frequency; mathematical modeling; stochastic processes
Published Online: 2006-10-10
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Keywords for this article
sports statistics;
parity;
predictability;
upset frequency;
mathematical modeling;
stochastic processes
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Parity and Predictability of Competitions
- Using Variable Reduction Techniques and Tolerance Intervals to Summarise a Fitness Testing Battery in Soccer
- Baseball Errors
- Review of Wages of Wins: A Reply
- Letter from the Editor
- The Passing Premium Puzzle
