https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/designing-schedules-in-sports-a-mathematical-approach-tickets-2001460842257
Designing Schedules in Sports: A Mathematical Approach
Speaker: Frits Spieksma, Full Professor and Chair of the Combinatorial Optimization group, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e)
About the event
At first sight, the schedule of any particular league or tournament may look like a rather mundane matter. Indeed, it is obvious that one has to pick certain dates and times for a set of matches to be played. However, that is not all there is to it. There is a, sometimes subtle, relation between the schedule of a tournament and its outcome. When one accepts this, it is clear that the schedule of a tournament should be designed with care, ensuring that, among the interests of all other stakeholders, fairness among players (or teams), receives the attention it deserves.
We will review examples that shed light on the relation between the schedule on the one hand, and the outcome on the other hand. From these examples, we extract analytical insights that allow us to construct fairer schedules. We intend to illustrate our findings by considering, among others, the Champions League in football, the TATA Steel Chess tournament, and the Premier League of Darts.
About the speaker
Frits Spieksma is a Full Professor, and Chair of the Combinatorial Optimization group in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). He has held appointments at KU Leuven, and Maastricht University. His key field of expertise is operations research, especially combinatorial optimization problems and applications thereof. His latest interests on the practical front concern (sport) scheduling and organ allocation.
Frits Spieksma has supervised around 20 PhD students, and published over a 100 papers. He is founder of the EURO Working Group OR in Sports, and member of the steering committee of MathSports International. He is currently serving as president of EURO.
EURO Practitioners’ Forum past and planned activities are available to the Forum members, as well as the wider public.
Register as a member for free, to get the regular updates on all activities: EPF Member registration page. The recordings and details from previous webinars are also available on this website. Follow the Forum LinkedIN group and LinkedIN page, and feel free to get in touch.