Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation
12-2009
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
M. Eng.
Department
Industrial Engineering
Committee Chair
Evans, Gerald W.
Subject
Football teams--Ratings and rankings; Ranking and selection (Statistics)
Abstract
A new method to rank football teams with the concepts associated with the Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) and Graph theory is developed in this thesis. A set of games is interpreted as a graph, in which every vertex represents a team, and every edge represents a team quality comparison evaluated directly from the score difference of a game. A weighted quality comparison value between every two teams is computed from the graph, based on the transitivity relationship of comparison values in the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). All the quality comparison values are input into the software package Expert Choice as the pair-wise comparison values in term of team quality, then Expert Choice can give the rankings of the teams. The method is illustrated through the use of scores associated with the 2007 Big East Conference football season. This method accounts for the margin of victory (score difference) in the rankings, which is the main difference as compared to the computer methods in the BCS system. Another characteristic of our method is that our ranking method considers indirect comparison as well as direct comparison between teams, using Graph theory to integrate and weight all these comparisons.
Recommended Citation
Sun, Yepeng 1976-, "The ranking of football teams using concepts from the analytic hierarchy process." (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1408.
https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/1408
