 An empirical Bayes model for time-varying paired comparisons ratings: Who is the greatest women’s tennis player?Rose D. Baker and Ian G. McHale European Journal of Operational Research, 2017, vol. 258, issue 1, 328-333 Abstract: We present a methodology for fitting a time-varying paired comparisons model using an empirical Bayes approach. The model simultaneously avoids two problems that typically arise with paired comparisons data: first, that extreme values of estimated strengths can occur for competitors appearing in and winning a small number of games, producing absurd rankings, and second, that the time-varying strengths ‘balloon’ over time. The empirical Bayes approach automatically shrinks the strength estimates towards the mean, thus avoiding both issues. We present our model and demonstrate its use in the setting of tennis in search of an answer to the question: who is the greatest women’s player of all time. Our results suggest that Steffi Graf is a strong candidate, but, using confidence intervals on the rankings themselves, others cannot be ruled out. Keywords: Bradley–Terry; Paired comparisons; Ranking; Sports; Shrinkage (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:258:y:2017:i:1:p:328-333 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2016.08.043 Access Statistics for this article European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier |
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