Undergraduate Mathematics Students

Sports Ranking and Game Prediction, Google style (and pizza!)

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Sports Ranking and Game Prediction, Google style
Anjela Govan
Thursday, November 13, 2008
3:00--3:50 p.m.
Harrelson 330

NCAA football does not a have a playoff system. Instead the teams are ranked throughout the season based on their performance. At the end of the year the two top-ranked teams play each other for the National Championship. The ranking formula used is complicated and takes numerous criteria into account.

Organized sport is the most fun example of a ranking problem, but ranking problems are everywhere and often form the basis for very important decisions. So how should we make the ranking? The best and most consistent approach is to use mathematics, and more specifically, matrix analysis. One of the extremely successful ranking algorithms is PageRank, developed by the founders of the internet search engine Google. PageRank is used to rank the relative importance of web pages.

Google's idea of web page ranking can be used in other applications, including organized sport. I'll describe experiments I did using PageRank to rank teams and predict game results for NFL football, NCAA basketball and NCAA football. The talk will be broadly accessible to undergraduates.

Pizza provided as always!

Check out the SUM Series website for more information on the SUM Series.

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Posted at 08:38AM Nov 07, 2008 by nreadin in General  |  Comments[0]