A Forward-Looking Approach to Compare Ranking Methods for Sports

In this paper, we provide a simple forward-looking approach to compare rating methods with respect to their stability over time. Given a rating vector of entities involved in the comparison and a ranking indicated by the rating, the stability of the methods is measured by the change in rating vector...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Peter Juma Ochieng, András London, Miklós Krész
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-05-01
Series:Information
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/13/5/232
Description
Summary:In this paper, we provide a simple forward-looking approach to compare rating methods with respect to their stability over time. Given a rating vector of entities involved in the comparison and a ranking indicated by the rating, the stability of the methods is measured by the change in rating vector and ranks of the entities over time from a forward-looking perspective. We investigate various linear algebraic rating methods and use the Euclidean distance and Kendall tau rank correlation to measure their stability in rating and ranking, respectively. The investigations are based on both rolling and expanding window approaches. We apply the methodology to sports as a widely known ranking and rating environment. The results suggest that PageRank and Massey rating methods provide better rating and ranking stability than simple methods, such as winning percentage, and more advanced ones, such as Colley’s least square and Keener’s eigenvector-based method. Finally, a simple way to examine the potential predictive power of the rating methods is also provided.
ISSN:2078-2489