UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Modelling Competitive Sports: Bradley-Terry-Élő Models for Supervised and On-Line Learning of Paired Competition Outcomes

Király, FJ; Qian, Z; (2017) Modelling Competitive Sports: Bradley-Terry-Élő Models for Supervised and On-Line Learning of Paired Competition Outcomes. arXiv , Article arXiv:1701.08055 [stat.ML]. Green open access

[thumbnail of 1701.08055v1.pdf]
Preview
Text
1701.08055v1.pdf - Published Version

Download (572kB) | Preview

Abstract

Prediction and modelling of competitive sports outcomes has received much recent attention, especially from the Bayesian statistics and machine learning communities. In the real world setting of outcome prediction, the seminal \'{E}l\H{o} update still remains, after more than 50 years, a valuable baseline which is difficult to improve upon, though in its original form it is a heuristic and not a proper statistical "model". Mathematically, the \'{E}l\H{o} rating system is very closely related to the Bradley-Terry models, which are usually used in an explanatory fashion rather than in a predictive supervised or on-line learning setting. Exploiting this close link between these two model classes and some newly observed similarities, we propose a new supervised learning framework with close similarities to logistic regression, low-rank matrix completion and neural networks. Building on it, we formulate a class of structured log-odds models, unifying the desirable properties found in the above: supervised probabilistic prediction of scores and wins/draws/losses, batch/epoch and on-line learning, as well as the possibility to incorporate features in the prediction, without having to sacrifice simplicity, parsimony of the Bradley-Terry models, or computational efficiency of \'{E}l\H{o}'s original approach. We validate the structured log-odds modelling approach in synthetic experiments and English Premier League outcomes, where the added expressivity yields the best predictions reported in the state-of-art, close to the quality of contemporary betting odds.

Type: Article
Title: Modelling Competitive Sports: Bradley-Terry-Élő Models for Supervised and On-Line Learning of Paired Competition Outcomes
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.08055
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: stat.ML, stat.ML, cs.LG, stat.AP, stat.ME
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Statistical Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1545162
Downloads since deposit
35Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item