Randomness in Competitions

Randomness in Competitions

We study the effects of randomness on competitions based on an elementary random process in which there is a finite probability that a weaker team upsets a stronger team. We apply this model to sports leagues and sports tournaments, and compare the theoretical results with empirical data. Our model shows that single-elimination tournaments are efficient but unfair: the number of games is propor...

COMPETITIONS Robot Competitions : What Did We Learn ?

Plagiarism in game programming competitions

On June 28, 2011 the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) disqualified and banned the program RYBKA and its programmer Vasik Rajlich from previous and future World Computer Chess Championships (WCCC). The ICGA has conducted an investigation into allegations that, in the chess program RYBKA, two other programs were plagiarized: CRAFTY and FRUIT. It was found that the allegations were ...

Randomness and Pseudo-Randomness in Discrete Mathematics

The discovery, demonstrated in the early work of Paley, Zygmund, Erdős, Kac, Turán, Shannon, Szele and others, that deterministic statements can be proved by probabilistic reasoning, led already in the first half of the century to several striking results in Analysis, Number Theory, Combinatorics and Information Theory. It soon became clear that the method, which is now called the probabilistic...

Efficiency of competitions.

League competition is investigated using random processes and scaling techniques. In our model, a weak team can upset a strong team with a fixed probability. Teams play an equal number of head-to-head matches and the team with the largest number of wins is declared to be the champion. The total number of games needed for the best team to win the championship with high certainty T grows as the c...