IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0251945.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Bayesian approach to time-varying latent strengths in pairwise comparisons

Author

Listed:
  • Blaž Krese
  • Erik Štrumbelj

Abstract

The famous Bradley-Terry model for pairwise comparisons is widely used for ranking objects and is often applied to sports data. In this paper we extend the Bradley-Terry model by allowing time-varying latent strengths of compared objects. The time component is modelled with barycentric rational interpolation and Gaussian processes. We also allow for the inclusion of additional information in the form of outcome probabilities. Our models are evaluated and compared on toy data set and real sports data from ATP tennis matches and NBA games. We demonstrated that using Gaussian processes is advantageous compared to barycentric rational interpolation as they are more flexible to model discontinuities and are less sensitive to initial parameters settings. However, all investigated models proved to be robust to over-fitting and perform well with situations of volatile and of constant latent strengths. When using barycentric rational interpolation it has turned out that applying Bayesian approach gives better results than by using MLE. Performance of the models is further improved by incorporating the outcome probabilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Blaž Krese & Erik Štrumbelj, 2021. "A Bayesian approach to time-varying latent strengths in pairwise comparisons," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(5), pages 1-17, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0251945
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251945
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0251945
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0251945&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0251945?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baker, Rose D. & McHale, Ian G., 2014. "A dynamic paired comparisons model: Who is the greatest tennis player?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 236(2), pages 677-684.
    2. Mark E. Glickman, 1999. "Parameter Estimation in Large Dynamic Paired Comparison Experiments," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 48(3), pages 377-394.
    3. Siem Jan Koopman & Rutger Lit, 2015. "A dynamic bivariate Poisson model for analysing and forecasting match results in the English Premier League," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 178(1), pages 167-186, January.
    4. Mark Glickman, 2001. "Dynamic paired comparison models with stochastic variances," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(6), pages 673-689.
    5. Rose D. Baker & Ian G. McHale, 2015. "Time varying ratings in association football: the all-time greatest team is.," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 178(2), pages 481-492, February.
    6. Rose Baker & Dan Jackson, 2014. "Statistical application of barycentric rational interpolants: an alternative to splines," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 29(5), pages 1065-1081, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Angelini, Giovanni & Candila, Vincenzo & De Angelis, Luca, 2022. "Weighted Elo rating for tennis match predictions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 297(1), pages 120-132.
    2. Baker, Rose D. & McHale, Ian G., 2017. "An empirical Bayes model for time-varying paired comparisons ratings: Who is the greatest women’s tennis player?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(1), pages 328-333.
    3. Santos-Fernandez Edgar & Wu Paul & Mengersen Kerrie L., 2019. "Bayesian statistics meets sports: a comprehensive review," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 15(4), pages 289-312, December.
    4. Kovalchik, Stephanie, 2020. "Extension of the Elo rating system to margin of victory," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1329-1341.
    5. Christophe Ley & Yves Dominicy, 2017. "Mutual Point-winning Probabilities (MPW): a New Performance Measure for Table Tennis," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2017-23, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Alexandra Grand & Regina Dittrich & Brian Francis, 2015. "Markov models of dependence in longitudinal paired comparisons: an application to course design," AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis, Springer;German Statistical Society, vol. 99(2), pages 237-257, April.
    7. Lasek, Jan & Gagolewski, Marek, 2021. "Interpretable sports team rating models based on the gradient descent algorithm," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1061-1071.
    8. Devlin Stephen & Treloar Thomas & Creagar Molly & Cassels Samuel, 2021. "An iterative Markov rating method," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 17(2), pages 117-127, June.
    9. Newton Paul K & Aslam Kamran, 2009. "Monte Carlo Tennis: A Stochastic Markov Chain Model," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 1-44, July.
    10. Araki, Kenji & Hirose, Yoshihiro & Komaki, Fumiyasu, 2019. "Paired comparison models with age effects modeled as piecewise quadratic splines," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 733-740.
    11. P. Gorgi & Siem Jan (S.J.) Koopman & R. Lit, 2018. "The analysis and forecasting of ATP tennis matches using a high-dimensional dynamic model," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 18-009/III, Tinbergen Institute.
    12. Boshnakov, Georgi & Kharrat, Tarak & McHale, Ian G., 2017. "A bivariate Weibull count model for forecasting association football scores," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 458-466.
    13. Mitchell J. Lovett & Ron Shachar, 2011. "The Seeds of Negativity: Knowledge and Money," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 430-446, 05-06.
    14. Collingwood, James A.P. & Wright, Michael & Brooks, Roger J, 2022. "Evaluating the effectiveness of different player rating systems in predicting the results of professional snooker matches," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 296(3), pages 1025-1035.
    15. Beaudoin, David & Swartz, Tim, 2018. "A computationally intensive ranking system for paired comparison data," Operations Research Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 5(C), pages 105-112.
    16. Song, Kai & Shi, Jian, 2020. "A gamma process based in-play prediction model for National Basketball Association games," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(2), pages 706-713.
    17. Luke S. Benz & Michael J. Lopez, 2023. "Estimating the change in soccer’s home advantage during the Covid-19 pandemic using bivariate Poisson regression," AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis, Springer;German Statistical Society, vol. 107(1), pages 205-232, March.
    18. Baker, Rose D. & McHale, Ian G., 2014. "A dynamic paired comparisons model: Who is the greatest tennis player?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 236(2), pages 677-684.
    19. Baboota, Rahul & Kaur, Harleen, 2019. "Predictive analysis and modelling football results using machine learning approach for English Premier League," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 741-755.
    20. Maria Bolsinova & Gunter Maris & Abe D. Hofman & Han L. J. van der Maas & Matthieu J. S. Brinkhuis, 2022. "Urnings: A new method for tracking dynamically changing parameters in paired comparison systems," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 71(1), pages 91-118, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0251945. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.