Optimising a Tournament for Use with Ranking Algorithms

Clayton DSouza
March 13, 2010
Abstract
The top division in American college football known as the Football Bowl Sub-
division uses a series of polls and computerised ranking systems to determine the
match-ups for the postseason bowl competition. In this dissertation, an algorithm
known as the Random Walker Ranking system (RWR) is considered. An alterna-
tive formulation in terms of Markov chains is provided and tournament schedules
that return the a priori ranking of the participants under the RWR algorithm are
investigated.
1 Introduction
One of the primary motivations of a sports tournament is to determine the best com-
petitor. In dierent sports, various formats are used with their own advantages and
disadvantages.
Many sports opt for a round-robin tournament in which every competitor plays
against every other competitor a xed number of times. Typically, this is once or twice
and is referred to as a single round-robin or double round-robin, respectively. An ex-
ample of a double round-robin is the format used in the top division of the professional
association football league in England known as the Barclays Premier League [11]. Each
team plays each other twice; one match at each teams home ground. Wins are awarded
three points and draws are awarded one point. At the end of the season, the team with
the most number of points is the winner. One advantage of a round-robin
1
tournament is
that each team has a schedule of the same strength. However, it requires a large number
of games, which is usually not feasible. If there are n teams, a robin-robin would require
_
n
2
_
games.
1
A round-robin tournament henceforth refers to a single round-robin tournament unless stated oth-
erwise.
1
Other sports such as tennis [16] and track athletics [14] use knock out or elimination
tournaments. These are structured into rounds in which the stronger competitors, as
determined by the outcome of a match/race proceed to the next round. With each suc-
cessive round, the number of competitors decreases until the nal round which consists
of just two players. The winner of this match is declared as the champion. Single elim-
ination tournaments are most common in which only the winner proceeds to the next
round but variants exist where some of losing competitors can also progress. A knock
out tournament is ecient as it determines the winner with fewest games played. How-
ever, a drawback is most teams are eliminated after playing a small number of games
and thus a single poor performance or unlucky result can lead to elimination.
As well as determining the single strongest competitor, a tournament can also be
used to produce seedings for future competitions by providing an aggregate ranking of
the teams/players. This is particularly common in American sports such as professional
baseball, football and basketball as well as college basketball and baseball where the
champion is determined through a post season competition or playo for the participants.
The prime motivating example is the top division of NCAA American College Foot-
ball known as the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). This consists of approximately 120
college teams who are organised into smaller conferences of around ten teams each. Typ-
ically, each team typically plays some teams within its own conference and plays some
teams from other conferences. These games make up the regular season, which is used
to determine the match-ups in the post season competition, known as the bowl season.
The FBS does not have a playo system to determine its champion. Instead an inde-
pendent body, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) committee aggregates a series of
expert poll results and computer ranking systems to determine the top ten teams [2].
The two best teams are invited to play in the BCS National Championship game, with
the winner declared champion. The eight other teams compete in other prestigious bowl
games but cannot win the championship that year.
The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the structure of tournaments for use
with a computer ranking system. The BCS selection process includes such ranking algo-
rithms as part of its framework. Although some of the algorithms have been disclosed,
the workings of others remain secret. This, combined with the diculty of understand-
ing for the lay sports fan has led to distrust in the ranking process whenever faced with
perverse results. Hence, it is desirable that the ranking system used with a tournament
be intuitive yet also provide results that agree with established sports knowledge. Such
a system is discussed in section 2.
In order to optimise a tournament, we will need to establish what is meant by a good
2
tournament. This is done in section 3. We consider a ranking as a permutation of the
teams and develop a metric that allows the comparison of rankings, including ones with
ties.
In section 4, we examine two dierent tournament structures and investigate their
properties analytically and using two computer heuristics. We nd that both tournament
structures are strong in some aspects but decient in others. A computer algorithm for
generating permutations is also considered.
In section 5, we develop a method to combine the desirable properties of both tour-
naments considered in section 4. The results for tournaments with 20, 40 and 120 teams
are reported.
Finally, in section 6, we review the dissertation and provide a conclusion.
2 Random Walker Ranking System
2.1 Background
We consider the random walker model devised by Callaghan, Mucha and Porter (CMP)
[3]. This ranks the football teams in the NCAA FBS by setting up a graph with the
vertices corresponding to the teams and edges representing matches between teams. A
random walker now traverses this network; when at a vertex, it picks a match played by
the team uniformly at random and moves to the winner with probability p (0.5, 1).
This interval for p ensures that the walker will favour winning teams but allows for the
possibility that the better team lost.
2
The rate at which the walker considers a game is
independent of the total games played by a team. This ensures there is no advantage by
playing more games.
The random walker can be thought of as an idealised voter deciding on the strongest
team. The voter believes the winner is the better team, a fraction p of the time. Hence
the voter uses the intuition most fans use to rank teams,My team is better than yours
because my team defeated yours, allowing for the possibility of an unlucky defeat. It
changes its preferred team, by selecting a opponent of its current preference and going
with the winner of the match with probability p. Some occasions, the voter may decide
to stick with its current preference. Given enough time, this voter will consider every
match between every team. However, it will never decide on a strongest team, i.e. a
single random walker will traverse the network forever.
Thus CMP consider a constant population of random walkers. Provided the network
2
More detail is given in section
3
is connected, the population of walkers will converge to a unique equilibrium distribution.
By counting the number of random walkers gathered on a vertex, CMP obtain a ranking
for the teams, as better teams will have accumulated more random walkers.
To set up the problem mathematically, suppose there are n teams. Let w
i
be the
number of wins by team i and let l
i
be the number of losses. Let S
ij
be the number of
games played between teams i and j and let A
ij
be the number of times i beat j minus
the number of times j beat i. For example, if team 1 played team 2 three times with team
1 winning one match and team 2 winning two matches, then S
12
= S
21
= 3, A
12
= 1
and A
21
= 1. Let v be a vector of length n with each entry containing the expected
population of random walkers at a given vertex, i.e. the expected number of votes for
a team. The total number of votes is constant and without loss of generality can be
normalised to 1 i.e

v
i
= T = 1 . The random walk is quantied by the homogeneous
ordinary dierential (ODE) equation v

= Dv.
Equation 2.1. The matrix D is for i, j {1, ..., n} :
D
ii
= pl
i
(1 p)w
i
(1)
D
ij
=
S
ij
2
+
2p 1
2
A
ij
for i = j
The limiting distributions are the xed points of this set of dierential equations.
These can be obtained by solving the equation:
D v = 0. (2)
Hence v is a vector in the kernel of D. Provided the network of teams consists of a single
connected component and p (0.5, 1), v is unique by the Perron-Frobenius theorem, as
described by [9]. In fact, we always have a single connected component by week 3, due
to the early season games generally being between teams in dierent divisions [3].
2.2 Formulation with Markov Chains
In this section, we will consider one voter making a decision on its choice of strongest
team. The random walk undertaken by the voter can be expressed in the form of a
Markov chain. There are two alternative formulations depending on if the time taken
for voters to reach equilibrium is discrete or continuous. We start by describing the
continuous time process using denitions from [6].
Let X = {X(t) : t 0} be a family of random variables taking values in some nite
4
state space R, with time indexed by the half line [0, ). The process X is a continuous
time Markov chain if satises the following condition:
Denition 2.2. The process X satises the Markov property if:
P(X(t
n
) = j|X(t
i
) = i
i
, . . . , X(t
n1
) = i
n1
) = P(X(t
n
) = j|X(t
n1
) = i
n1
) (3)
for all j, i
1
, . . . , i
n1
R and any sequence t
1
< t
2
< ... < t
n
of times.
In this case, X(t) represents the voters choice of strongest team at time t and R is
set of all teams that play in the FBS plus a hypothetical team non FBS Team that
represents any team outside the FBS. Teams within the FBS occasionally play teams
outside the division and it is convenient to represent all of these teams as one. This
approximation was found to be reasonable as most non FBS teams are much weaker
than FBS teams and so will not aect the rankings of the FBS teams much apart from
penalising those teams which they defeat [3].
In order to explain the evolution of X, we will need some basic denitions [6].
Denition 2.3. The transition probability p
ij
(s, t) is dened to be:
p
ij
(s, t) = P(X(t) = j |X(s) = i) for s t (4)
Denition 2.4. A Markov chain is called homogeneous if p
ij
(s, t) = p
ij
(0, t s) for all
i, j, s, t
We assume X is a homogeneous chain, and write P
t
for the |R| |R| matrix with
entries p
ij
(t).
Denition 2.5. The generator matrix Q is dened to be:
Q = lim
h0
1
h
(P
h
I) (5)
We express the random walk as a continuous time Markov chain (CTMC) by speci-
fying Q. We use a number of denitions, as made by Young [19]:
5
Denition 2.6.
Let W be a matrix such that W
ij
is the number of times team i beat team j.
Let L be a matrix such that L
ij
is the number of times team i lost to team j.
Let S = W +L so S
ij
= S
ji
is the number of games played by team i against team j.
Let w
i
=

j
W
ij
be the number of wins for team i
Let l
i
=

j
L
ij
be the number of losses for team i
The matrix S provides the schedule of the tournament i.e. a description of all the
matches within the tournament.
Equation 2.7. Q is for i, j {1, ..., n}:
Q
ii
= (pl
i
+ (1 p)w
i
) for i = j (6)
Q
ij
= pL
ij
+ (1 p)W
ij
for i = j
The diagonal entries correspond to the rate of leaving state i and can be understood
intuitively as the voter switching allegiance from team i with probability p when team i
has lost and probability 1 p when team i has won. The o-diagonal entries represent
the rate of going from i to j and the intuition is that the voter switches allegiance from
team i to team j with probability p when team i has lost and 1 p when team i has
won.
Since w
i
=

j
W
ij
and l
i
=

j
L
ij
, Q can be expressed as:
Q = p[L diag(L 1)] + (1 p)[Wdiag(W 1)] (7)
where 1 denotes a vector of ones and diag(v) is a matrix with the vector v along the
diagonal and zeros elsewhere.
We wish to consider the long-term behaviour of the Markov chain. In order to do
this we consider the invariant distribution , dened as a vector such that Q = 0.
Given , we use the Ergodic Theorem stated below to calculate the long term behaviour
of the chain.
Theorem 2.1. Ergodic Theorem [13]: Let X(t) be an irreducible positive recurrent
continuous time Markov chain with generator matrix Q then
P
_
1
t
_
t
0
1
{X
s
=i}
ds
i
_
= 1 as t (8)
6
Provided p < 1 and the graph contains a single connected component, the assump-
tions of (8) are satised. From Norris [13], a state i is positive recurrent if
P(t 0 : X
t
= i is unbounded |X
0
= i) = 1. A Markov chain is recurrent if its jump
chain is recurrent, which in this case it is as it is a nite closed class.
This gives another interpretation of the voter. The stationary distribution gives the
long term average the voter spends in each state i.e. what proportion of time the voter
decides that team is the best. Seeing as the voter prefers stronger teams, we obtain a
ranking by taking an ordering of . We compare this ranking to the ranking obtained
from the ODE formulation.
Proposition 2.2. The rankings from the continuous time Markov chain approach and
the ordinary dierential equation approach are the same.
Proof. The diagonal entries of the rate matrix D and the generator Q are the same. In
fact, D = Q
T
because for i = j:
D
ij
=
S
ij
2
+
2p 1
2
A
ij
(9)
=
1
2
(W
ij
+L
ij
) +
2p 1
2
(W
ij
L
ij
)
=
1 + 2p 1
2
W
ij
+
1 2p + 1
2
L
ij
= pW
ij
+ (1 p)L
ij
= pL
ji
+ (1 p)W
ji
= Q
ji
To nd the stationary distribution of the CTMC, one solves Q = (0, . . . , 0). By
taking transposes, this is equivalent to the equation solved by CMP: D v = 0 where
v =
T
. Hence the ranking obtained from both approaches is identical.
An alternative way to describe the random walker model is through a discrete time
Markov chain (DTMC). The process X(t) still takes values from R but is now time
is indexed by the non-negative integers. The transition matrix for the DTMC can be
derived from the generator of the CTMC, Q:
7
0 = Q (10)
0 = Q+
= Q+ I
= (Q+I)
Thus we see P = Q+I is the transition matrix with as its stationary distribution
as the row sums of P are 1. In the discrete case, the population interpretation considered
in the ODE formulation is preferred. Rather than each walker considering each game
at a given rate, one game is picked at random from the whole schedule, and the walkers
involved undertake the appropriate probabilistic actions. There is no advantage given
to teams that play more games than other teams. We deduce this by observing the
probability of the chain jumping from a state i to itself, P
ii
= 1 [pl
i
+ (1 p)w
i
]
decreases as the number of games played increases. As this Markov chain is completely
determined by Q, we will also obtain the same ranking using this model.
In this section, a one parameter model was outlined. It is natural to ask the question,
What is an appropriate value of p? The parameter p gives the probability that the
walker jumps from vertex i to j given that team i beat team j. This implies that p can
be interpreted as the probability that team i is better than team j given i beat j. From
[3], a value of around 0.75 is found to be give good empirical results. The rationale for
this is that values close to 1 over-emphasize unbeaten sequences, neglecting the quality
of opponent whereas values close to 0.5 attach too much weight to the diculty of a
teams xture list. In this sense, 0.75 provides a happy medium.
3 Comparing Rankings
To be able to optimise a tournament, we will need to dene the concept of a good
tournament. T. McGarry and R. W. Schutz (MS) [12] suggest the best tournament is
the structure that best ranks the players according to their a priori standings
3
. MS
dene head-to-head win probabilities for eight teams. Through running simulations with
various tournament structure, MS determine the dierence between the observed rank
of the teams and the expected rank. However, in the case of NCAA FBS, there are 120
teams so this approach is impractical. Hence a simplifying assumption is required: To
3
Other suggestions include:
8
model the head-to-head win probabilities we use the sure win probability model as used
by [10]. Initially, we provide a denition for a ranking.
Denition 3.1. Let [n] = {1, . . . , n} be a set of teams for n N. A ranking of the
teams is a permutation of [n]. Team i is given rank r
i
. We consider the strongest team
to be given rank 1 and the weakest team rank n.
Denition 3.2. Sure Win Probability: Suppose we have team i (resp. j) with ranking
r
i
(resp. r
j
). Then
P(Team i defeats team j) =
_
1 if r
i
< r
j
0 if r
i
> r
j
(11)
Suppose we have a hypothetical tournament schedule S, as in denition 2.6, the sure
win probability allows us to simulate W as in 2.6 and then Q dened in 6. The ranking
arising under S can then be calculated by working out the ordering of the stationary
distribution. This can be done for arbitrary S to give a unique ranking provided the
conditions of theorem 2.1 are satised.
We wish to consider how dierent are two rankings arising from this method. A well
known metric on set of permutations is known as Spearmans Footrule [4].
Denition 3.3. Let
n
be the set of permutations of length n. Let ,
n
. Spear-
mans Footrule, D is dened as:
D(, ) =
n

i=1
|(i) (i)| (12)
However, the random walker ranking procedure can produce ties and not give a
proper permutation. We introduce some terminology [5]:
Denition 3.4. A Bucket order is a transitive binary relation on a domain X for
which there are sets B
1
, ..., B
t
(the buckets) that form a partition of the domain such
that x y if and only if there exist i, j with i < j such that x B
i
and y B
j
. If
x y, we say x precedes y. The elements of a bucket are considered to be tied. In a
permutation, every bucket is of size 1
Denition 3.5. The position of a bucket B
j
, dened as pos(B
j
) = (

i<j
|B
i
|) +
1+|B
j
|
2
can be thought of as the average location in the bucket.
9
A ranking with ties is known as a partial ranking. We associate a partial ranking
to a bucket ordering by letting (x) = pos(B) where x B. Spearmans footrule now
generalises to partial rankings as required.
4 Properties of Specic Tournaments
4.1 Round-Robin Tournaments
We can now examine the properties of some tournaments. We start with the round-robin
tournament with n teams. Hence, S is in this case:
S
ij
= 0 for i = j (13)
S
ij
= 1 for i = j
Proposition 4.1. Under the sure win rule in equation (11), a round robin tournament
returns the lowest possible measure of dissimilarity, D = 0.
Proof. From equation (6), the generator matrix Q can be expressed as:
Q
ii
= [pi + (1 p)(n i)] (14)
Q
ij
= p I
{r
j
<r
i
}
+ (1 p) I
{r
i
<r
j
}
Dividing through p and dening =
1p
p
(0, 1) gives:
Q
ii
= [r
i
+(n r
i
)] (15)
Q
ij
= I
{r
j
<r
i
}
+ I
{r
i
<r
j
}
The stationary distribution satises Q = 0
We assume there exists a ranking without ties as in denition 3.1. Without further loss
of generality, assume r
i
< r
j
. We wish to show that
i
>
j
. Multiplying out with the
i
th
column of Q gives:
0 =
n

k
q
ki
= (16)

i
[r
i
+(n r
i
)] +
n

k=i

k
( I
{r
i
<r
k
}
+ I
{r
k
<r
i
}
)
10
Similarly, the j
th
column of Q gives:
0 =
n

k
q
ki
= (17)

j
[r
j
+(n r
j
)] +
n

k=j

k
( I
{r
j
<r
k
}
+ I
{r
k
<r
j
}
)
Subtracting (17) from (16) gives:
0 = [r
j

j
r
i

i
] +[n(
j

i
) +r
i

i
r
j

j
] +
j

i
+ (18)
n

k=i,j

k
[ I
{r
i
<r
k
}
I
{r
j
<r
k
}
] +
k
[ I
{r
k
<r
i
}
I
{r
k
<r
j
}
]
Note that the only contribution from the summation comes from the case when
r
i
< r
k
< r
j
. In all other cases of r
i
, r
k
, r
j
the indicator functions cancel. The possibility
of I
{r
j
<r
k
}
= 1 and I
{r
k
<r
i
}
= 1 cannot occur as it implies r
j
< r
k
< r
i
but by
assumption r
i
< r
j
. Hence (18) becomes:
0 = r
j

j
r
i

i
+[n(
j

i
) +r
i

i
r
j

j
] +
j

i
+ (19)
n

{k: r
i
<r
k
<r
j
}

k

k
The term within the summation, (1 )
k
, is positive because (0, 1). Hence,
0 > r
j

j
r
i

i
+[n(
j

i
) +r
i

i
r
j

j
] +
j

i
(20)
= r
j

j
r
i

i
+(r
i

i
r
j

j
) +n(
j

i
) +
j

i
= (1 )(r
j

j
r
i

i
) +n(
j

i
) +
j

i
= (1 )(r
j

j
r
j

i
+r
j

i
r
i

i
) +n(
j

i
) +
j

j
+
j

i
= (1 )[r
j
(
j

i
) +
i
(r
j
r
i
)
. .
>0
] +n(
j

i
) + (1 )
j
. .
>0
+(
j

i
)
> (
j

i
)[(1 )r
j
+n +
. .
>0
].
Hence
j

i
< 0, so team i is ranked above j. Because i and j were arbitrary, the whole
ranking is recovered. The random walker ranking is the same as the original ranking,
thus D = 0 as required.
11
4.2 Permutations
Another advantage of the round robin tournament is that it is unaected by the permu-
tations of the initial ranking or seeding of the teams. This is because every team has the
same xtures so there is no advantage by being seeded higher. However, this is not the
case with tournaments without this symmetry. In order to address this, we permute the
initial ranking of the teams and measure how well the random walker ranking recovers
this permutation. Let be a random permutation of n teams. This is the initial seeding
of the teams such that r
i
= (i). Using and S, we calculate W and consequently
Q. We can then calculate the random walker (partial) ranking, and work out D as
in equation (12). Ideally, we would like to consider every permutation of the teams.
However the number of permutations for n teams is n!, so it soon becomes too large for
this to be be practical. Hence we use Monte Carlo methods. We generate a xed number
of random permutations from the n! possibilities, noting the value of D we obtain for
each permutation. We then take the mean value of Ds obtained. This gives an overall
indication of the predictive power of the tournament, mean D (denoted as

D). The
accuracy of

D increases as the number of permutations considered increases.
We utilise the algorithm to generate permutations known as the Random Permu-
tation Generator [15]. Let
n
be the set of permutations on n objects denoted as
[n] = {1, . . . , n}. The algorithm draws elements
1
,
2
, . . . ,
n
from [n] without replace-
ment and combines them sequentially to form
1

2
. . .
n
=
n
. We specify the
distribution of permutations through the parameter [0, 1]. (This choice of parame-
terisation is explained on page 13).
Denition 4.1. Using , we dene a a n 1 control vector z such that.
z
i
= z
i1
, i = 2, . . . , n (21)

j
z
j
= 1 (22)
The i
th
entry of this control vector z
i
gives the probability that the element i is the
rst entry i.e.
1
= i. After the rst entry is drawn, we dene a new control vector,
where the probability of drawing the element that we have just drawn is set to zero, and
the remaining probabilities are normalised so that they sum to one. The second entry,

2
is drawn from this distribution. Again, we dene a new vector, setting the probability
of all elements that have been drawn to zero and normalising the probability of those
elements that have not been yet drawn so that their sum is one. This continues until all
elements have been drawn, giving a permutation of [n].
12
Formally, suppose R [n] represents the elements that have already been drawn.
Denition 4.2. The control vector given R denoted z|R is for all i [n]
z

i
=
_

_
0 if i R
z
i

i / R
z
i
if i / R
(23)
Initially, set R = , noting that z| = z. For each step, we draw
i
from the
distribution specied by z|R and then add the element
i
we have just drawn to R.
This terminates when |R| = n so all elements have been drawn. The string given by

1
. . .
n
gives a permutation.
There are three cases for : = 0, (0, 1) and = 1. If we set = 1, according to
denition 4.1 the control vector z becomes [
1
n
, . . . ,
1
n
]
T
. The rst element,
1
is chosen
uniformly from [n]. After |R| elements have been drawn, it is clear that all non-zero
elements of z

are
1
n|R|
, and so are equally likely. This means that all n! permutations
are equally likely so we draw a permutation uniformly from
n
.
We assert the following property of the random permutation generator (see [15] for
proof).
Proposition 4.2. Let i,j [n]. The probability that i precedes j in any permutation
generated is given by:
P(i precedes j) =
z
i
z
i
+z
j
(24)
Consider 0. The probability, P(i precedes i +1) =
z
i
z
i
+z
i+1
=
z
i
z
i
+z
i
1. Hence,
as 0, the permutation 12 . . . n will generated almost surely.
Hence, provides a convenient index for how uniform the distribution of permuta-
tions returned by the generator is. When = 1, it is the uniform over all n! possibilities
whereas if = 0, all the probability mass is assigned to one permutation. In the open
interval (0, 1), a higher value of implies a more even spread of probability amongst the
n elements. Throughout the rest of this dissertation, we assume = 1.
4.3 Tournaments with Minimal Games
Round-robin tournaments have good properties with regards to the lowest D and symme-
try but they have the largest number of games. We now look at tournaments with small
number of games. The random walker algorithm requires a single connected component
of the graph of teams for a unique stationary distribution. The graph of a tournament
which achieves this with the fewest possible games (i.e edges) corresponds to a tree, a
13
graph with no cycles. A tree on n vertices has n 1 edges [1], so this is the minimum
number of games that can be played.
We now search for the worst possible case in terms of

D. It is unknown what the
highest possible

D would be for a tournament with n teams and n 1 games. Hence
we calculate it empirically. There are a number of heuristics that can be used for this
purpose. The solution we obtain from heuristic is not expected to be the optimal solution
but it provides a good solution in reasonable time.
The simplest heuristic is the Greedy Algorithm: Suppose n is xed. We start with
a connected schedule S with n 1 games. At each step, we perturb S by deleting
a random game and adding a random game to give S

, ensuring the network is still

connected. This can be guaranteed by noting that because S is a tree, deleting an edge
will always disconnected the graph into two components S
1
and S
2
. We pick any vertex
uniformly in S
1
and join it to a random vertex in S
2
to create a tree on n vertices, S

.
We calculate

D of S

through calculating a xed number of permutations as described

above. If

D of S

is greater than

D of S, we set S = S

for the next step. Otherwise, we

try a new perturbation of S. We do this for a xed number of trials, in this case 10000.
This algorithm is run for a number of dierent n values, with the results given in Table
2.
The greedy algorithm is simple to implement but is expected to get stuck at a
suboptimal local maximum as it will never move to a solution S

with worse

D. An
algorithm that attempts to rectify this is simulated annealing [17]. This algorithm
is named after a technique in metalworking, in which a material is heated and then
cooled in a controlled fashion to reduce its internal structure to the lowest energy state.
The heating causes the atoms of the material to move freely with respect to each other,
randomising their distribution; and the subsequent slow cooling gives the atoms a chance
to form a structure with lower energy than the initial state. Analogously, the algorithm
attempts to minimise a objective function E (analogue of energy). Given the current
solution, the algorithm proposes a new nearby solution and selects it proportional to
the dierence of the energy states of the two solutions and a control variable T (analogue
of temperature). If the current solution has energy E
1
and the proposed solution has
E
2
, the probability that the algorithm adopts E
2
as its new current solution is:
p
A
= min{exp{
E
1
E
2
T
}, 1} (25)
If E
2
< E
1
, p
A
= 1, so the algorithm always selects a move that reduces E (a downhill
move). However, if the proposed solution has higher E, there is still a chance that it will
14
be accepted and hence the algorithm can escape local minima. The dependency on T
is such that when T is large, the algorithm has a high chance of accepting uphill moves
so explores a large proportion of the solution space but as T decreases the algorithm
increasingly prefers downhill moves. An annealing schedule is required that species
when and by how much to decrease T. Trial and error is required to set up the annealing
schedule as if T is reduced too quickly, the algorithm may not explore enough of the
solution space and get caught at a local minima but if T is reduced too slowly, the
computation will be inecient and run longer than necessary.
In order to set up our problem to use simulated annealing, we provide the following
elements: S gives a description of a possible solution i.e. the adjacency matrix of a tree
on n vertices. The method of perturbing S to give S

given in the Greedy Algorithm

allows the generation of new nearby solutions. Since we are seeking to maximise

D,
an appropriate choice of E is

D which we seek to minimise. We generate an annealing

schedule through experimentation: By running a few hundred iterations of the genera-
tor, we can observe the dierence in E at each step. Initially, we want p
A
to be high
so we explore the solution space adequately. Hence , we set T much larger than the
maximum dierence, so even uphill moves have a good chance of being accepted (be-
cause
E
1
E
2
T
will be close to 0, p
A
will be close to 1) . Rather than prescribing exactly
how and when T is reduced, we set clauses that force T to be reduced. For a given T,
we generate a maximum of number of candidate solutions, K. We keep track of the
number of accepted solutions, J for a given temperature. The temperature is reduced
by a constant multiplicative factor either when K solutions have been considered or
we hit a prescribed limit, L of accepted solutions i.e. J > L (meaning we have found a
promising subset of solution space). The algorithm terminates when we have considered
a specied number of temperatures, n
max
, or for a given temperature, all K solutions
have been rejected. Following the example given by the simulated annealing algorithm
for the travelling salesman problem given in [17], we set the parameters as follows:
Parameter Value
Starting T 5
0.9
K 50n
L 10n
n
max
100
Table 1: Parameter values for simulated annealling
15
The results for the simulated annealing are also given in table 2.
n Greedy Algorithm Simulated Anneal
20 87.349 87.284
40 371.871 374.752
120 3227.843 3243.767
Table 2:

D returned by the algorithms
Thus we have a answer for what is the worst

D for a tree tournament; one with n1
games. We have an idea of the magnitude of D because

D is a empirical realisation of
D. Moreover, from conducting empirical trials, we believe these values give the worst
possible D for all connected tournaments with n teams. The minimum D is achieved
when the maximum number of games has been played i.e. in the case of a round-robin
tournament.
5 Developing Tournaments
In the previous section, two dierent tournaments were examined. It was shown that
round-robin tournament was optimal in D but had the largest number of games. Con-
versely, a tree tournament had the minimum number of games but the worst possible
D. Is possible to nd a tournament which combines the good properties of these two
tournament types? i.e. A low D and a small number of games.
We require a rule to evaluate the tness of a tournament.
Denition 5.1. Given a tournament S, the tness of S is:
F(x, y) =
x (n 1)
(n 1)(
n
2
1)
+
y

D
max
, , R (26)
where x =
1
2

i,j
S
ij
and y =

D(S)
The number of the games in the tournament is x and y is the measure of dissimilarity.
We set = = 1 so that we equally weight the two factors. Under this choice of
parameters, F = 1 for the round-robin tournament because:
F
__
n
2
_
, 0
_
=
n(n1)
2
(n 1)
(n 1)(
n
2
1)
= 1 (27)
16
Similarly, a tree tournament also has a tness rating of one.
F(n 1,

D
max
) =
(n 1) (n 1)
(n 1)(
n
2
1)
+

D
max

D
max
= 1 (28)
In order to nd a good tournament, we attempt to minimise the tness function.
When evaluating the tness function, we set

D
max
to be the maximum of the

D obtained
through simulated annealing and by running the greedy algorithm. As in the case of
nding

D for a tree tournament, we use the same heuristics to nd a reasonable solution
(namely, the greedy algorithm and simulated annealing). For both algorithms, we use
the same description of the solution space, S.
For the greedy algorithm, the generator for nearby solutions for general tourna-
ments (as opposed to just trees) works in the following way: Given a tournament S, we
pick one of three options uniformly at random to form S

:
1. We pick a match at random and delete it.
2. We pick a pair of teams who are not playing each other (i.e. a non-match) at
random and add a match between them
3. Swapping: We pick one match and one non-match. We turn the match into a
non-match and the non-match into a match.
We have to be careful to ensure that S

is connected. At each stage, we can simply

check this property using the breadth-rst search algorithm, and try a new perturbation
if connectivitiy fails to hold. The greedy algorithm proceeds by downhill moves in the
tness function, terminating after a xed number of iterations as before set to 10000.
In the case of simulated annealing, the tness function is the analogue of energy here.
We use the same solution generator as in the greedy algorithm above. The parameters
for the simulated annealing are the same as in Table 1.
5.1 Results
From running the algorithms, the following results are obtained. We investigate the
cases with 20,40 and 120 teams. For each tournament we obtain, we report its tness
along with the number of games and

D.
17
5.1.1 20 team tournaments
Variable Greedy Simulated Annealing
Fitness 0.5986 0.6006
x 50 54
y 37.159 34.807
Table 3: Properties of Tournaments with n = 20
(a) S obtained via greedy algorithm (b) S obtained via annealing
Figure 1: Tournaments with n = 20
In this case, the greedy algorithm has found a minimum with lower tness function
than simulated annealing. The greedy solution has lower games but this is compensated
with higher dissimilarity as expected. However, the values of the tness (0.5986 and
0.6006) are close together and are very hard to distinguish. A slight change in method-
ology (for example, changing the value of and ) would switch which solutions tness
is lower. Simulated annealing has found a schedule which occupies a similar region of
the solution space to the Greedy algorithm.
5.1.2 40 team tournaments
There is more of a signicant dierence between the tness of the two solutions here with
simulated annealing nding a solution with better tness. The two solutions occupy
The visualisation of the graphs use the Kamada-Kawai placement of vertices [8]. The MATLAB
implementation used to produce these gures is featured here [18].
18
Variable Greedy Simulated Annealing
Fitness 0.5962 0.5461
x 347 286
y 67.616 80.498
Table 4: Properties of Tournaments with n = 40
(a) S obtained via greedy algorithm (b) S obtained via annealing
Figure 2: Tournaments with n = 40
dierent areas of solution space with the greedy solution having 61 more games than the
annealed solution as opposed to the 20 team case where both solutions were similar in
tness, the number of games and

D. This implies the parameter values in the annealing
schedule in this case were maybe more appropriate than in the 20 team case.
We calculate the 20 and 40 team cases to explore whether there exists scaling with
respect to n in the properties of a tournament. All the tournaments have similar tness.
However, comparing the visualisations of graphs, the number of games and

D, there
does not appear to be any sign of scaling. The solution space has a lot of local minima
so it is not suprising the algorithms found schedules with dierent properties but similar
tness function values.
5.1.3 120 team tournaments
We use data from the NCAA FBS season 2009-2010 [7]. The data includes the date,
the participants and the score of every college football match in 2009. As discussed in
Section 2.2, the FBS contains 120 teams but a hypothetical 121
st
is added to represent
19
all non-FBS teams in the random walker ranking system. However, for the purposes
of creating a FBS schedule, the possibility of FBS teams playing non-FBS teams is
excluded. We also only include the regular season as we seek to produce a ranking to
decide bowl match-ups. Hence, we lter out all matches violating these criteria. To
create the S matrix, we assign integers to each of the teams in FBS. The matrix S is
then created in the usual way: S
ij
= S
ji
= 1 if team i played team j and 0 otherwise.
We run the permutation procedure described in section 4.2 on page 12 to the get results
in Table 5.
Variable Greedy Simulated Anneal Actual
Fitness 0.5812 0.56667 0.3974
x 3500 3374 679
y 324.545 336.599 1030.267
Table 5: Properties of Tournaments with n = 120
20
(a) S obtained via greedy algorithm (b) S obtained via annealing
(c) S obtained from NCAA FBS Season 2009
Figure 3: Tournaments with n = 120
The simulated annealing and the greedy solutions have similar properties in terms
of tness, number of games and dissimilarity. The simulated annealing solution has 126
fewer games but this is oset by an increased

D of 12.054. These two solutions occupy a
similar region of the solution space. We observe that the actual schedule has signicantly
better tness than the other two tournaments. It has a much lower number of games
( 679, which is around 5 times lower) but higher

D (1030.267, which is around 3 times
more). We believe this solution lies in a completely dierent area of solution space,
which has not been explored by the greedy algorithm or simulated annealing.
21
6 Conclusion
In this dissertation, we considered the Random Walker Ranking Algorithm, originally
expressed in terms of ordinary dierential equations. We re-expressed this algorithm in
terms of Markov chains, in cases where the time for the hypothetical voter to decide on
its choice of the strongest team was continuous and discrete. We showed that the results
obtained from these three approaches are identical. We considered a partial ranking of
n teams as a bucket ordering on the set of n teams. A proper ranking (i.e. without ties)
has every bucket of size 1. We used Spearmans Footrule, D to measure how dissimilar
two (partial) rankings are. Under the choice of the sure-win rule, we showed a robin-
robin has the lowest possible dissimilarity, D = 0. We searched for the worst possible
case of D, which we believe to occur when the smallest number of games (n 1) has
been played. Hence, we used the Greedy Algorithm and Simulated Annealing to search
through the set of all trees on n vertices. To get an exact value for D required generating
n! permutations, which is prohibitively large. Thus, we used Monte Carlo methods to
calculate

D. We dened a tness function for a general schedule with n teams. We used
the same algorithms as before to search the set of all connected graphs on n vertices to
nd a schedule with low tness, with n set to 20, 40 and 120. We found no evidence of
scaling in schedules found in the 20 and 40 team case. In 120 team case, we compared
the algorithmic schedules with the 2009 schedule. The 2009 schedule had signicantly
lower tness rating implying it lies in a promising area of solution space, not explored
by either algorithm.
Possible areas for future work include understanding why neither algorithm found a
solution with tness as good as the 2009 schedule. In the case of simulated annealing,
this could be down to the parameter choice or the nearby solution generator. Using
more computational power than was available for this dissertation, a more through
search of the solution space could be carried out (e.g. increasing n
max
, the maximum
temperatures considered or K, number of solutions generated for each temperature),
which may yield better results. A solution generator that allowed a more eective
traversing of the solution space (set of all connected graphs on n vertices) would also
be an improvement. Alternatively, other optimisation heuristics may be more eective
at solving this problem. One could try an implementation of the genetic algorithm
approach, where a population of possible solutions are maintained. At each generation,
the solutions with the best tness in the population pass on their characteristics to the
next generation. Over time, the solutions evolve towards the optimum solution.
In conclusion, the current FBS schedule provides a good tourament for use with the
22
Random Walker Ranking system. As we search for better tournaments, our understand-
ing of sports scheduling with respect to ranking algorithms will be improved.
References
[1] B. Bollobas. Modern graph theory. Springer Verlag, 1998.
[2] T. Callaghan, P. Mucha, and M. Porter. The bowl championship series: A mathe-
matical review. Arxiv preprint physics/0403049, 2004.
[3] T. Callaghan, P. Mucha, and M. Porter. Random walker ranking for NCAA division
IA football. American Mathematical Monthly, 114(9):761, 2007.
[4] P. Diaconis and R. Graham. Spearmans Footrule as a Measure of Disarray. Journal
of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), page 262, 1977.
[5] R. Fagin, R. Kumar, M. Mahdian, D. Sivakumar, and E. Vee. Comparing and
aggregating rankings with ties. In Proceedings of the twenty-third ACM SIGMOD-
SIGACT-SIGART symposium on Principles of database systems, page 47, 2004.
[6] G. Grimmett and D. Stirzaker. Probability and random processes. Oxford University
Press, 2001.
[7] J. Howell. James howells college football scores, 2009.
[8] T. Kamada and S. Kawai. An algorithm for drawing general undirected graphs.
Information processing letters, 31(1):7, 1989.
[9] J. Keener. The Perron-Frobenius theorem and the ranking of football teams. SIAM
review, 35(1):8093, 1993.
[10] K. Kobayashi, H. Kawasaki, and A. Takemura. Parallel matching for ranking all
teams in a tournament. Adv. in Appl. Probab, 38(3):804, 2006.
[11] B. P. League. Premier league rules 09/10, 2009.
[12] T. McGarry and R. Schutz. Ecacy of traditional sport tournament structures.
The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 48(1):65, 1997.
[13] J. Norris. Markov chains. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
[14] I. A. of Athletics Federations. Iaaf competition rules 2010-2011, 2010.
23
[15] B. Oommen and D. Ng. On generating random permutations with arbitrary distri-
butions. The Computer Journal, 33(4):368, 1990.
[16] G. Pollard. A new tennis scoring system. Res Q Exerc Sport, 58:229233, 1987.
[17] W. Press, S. Teukolsky, W. Vetterling, and B. Flannery. Numerical recipes: the art
of scientic computing. Cambridge Univ Pr, 2007.
[18] A. Traud, C. Frost, P. Mucha, and M. Porter. Visualization of communities in
networks. Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, 19:041104,
2009.
[19] S. Young. Alternative aspects of sports scheduling. Preprint, 2004.
24