Issue: 2011/Vol.21/No.1, Pages 65-75
AN EFFECTIVE SYSTEM OF SPORTS COMPETITION MANAGEMENT
Roman Szostek
Cite as: R. Szostek. An effective system of sports competition management. Operations Research and Decisions 2011: 21(1), 65-75.
Abstract
An innovatory system of managing sports competitions has been presented. Its advantages with regard to other currently used systems are discussed. A theorem connected with such a system has been presented in the last section of the paper. Sports competitions aim to establish a ranking of the participating teams. This consists of sorting teams according to a quality which can be thought of as the ability to win matches. Direct measurement of this quality is not possible, since the ability to win matches depends on a great variety of factors being difficult to determine. Nevertheless, it is possible to compare any two teams if they play a match. These matches are played under normal rules. In turn, all the rules valid during sports competitions, outside the matches, make a system of sport competi- tion. Sorting sports teams differs from typical problems of sorting. The result of a comparison of teams is sometimes misleading. It happens that a team with a greater ability to win matches loses a match to a team with a smaller ability to win matches. Thus, the problem of sorting teams is a prob- abilistic problem. Due to this reason, traditional sorting methods are ineffective in terms of managing sports competitions.
Keywords: sports games, championships, system of sports competitions, probabilistic sorting, computational complexity
Received: Accepted: