%0 Generic %1 phelan2017hierarchical %A Phelan, Gabriel C. %A Whelan, John T. %D 2017 %K bradley-terry sport %T Hierarchical Bayesian Bradley-Terry for Applications in Major League Baseball %U http://arxiv.org/abs/1712.05879 %X A common problem faced in statistical inference is drawing conclusions from paired comparisons, in which two objects compete and one is declared the victor. A probabilistic approach to such a problem is the Bradley-Terry model, first studied by Zermelo in 1929 and rediscovered by Bradley and Terry in 1952. One obvious area of application for such a model is sporting events, and in particular Major League Baseball. With this in mind, we describe a hierarchical Bayesian version of Bradley-Terry suitable for use in ranking and prediction problems, and compare results from these application domains to standard maximum likelihood approaches. Our Bayesian methods outperform the MLE-based analogues, while being simple to construct, implement, and interpret.

@misc{phelan2017hierarchical, abstract = {A common problem faced in statistical inference is drawing conclusions from paired comparisons, in which two objects compete and one is declared the victor. A probabilistic approach to such a problem is the Bradley-Terry model, first studied by Zermelo in 1929 and rediscovered by Bradley and Terry in 1952. One obvious area of application for such a model is sporting events, and in particular Major League Baseball. With this in mind, we describe a hierarchical Bayesian version of Bradley-Terry suitable for use in ranking and prediction problems, and compare results from these application domains to standard maximum likelihood approaches. Our Bayesian methods outperform the MLE-based analogues, while being simple to construct, implement, and interpret.}, added-at = {2018-01-08T13:01:45.000+0100}, author = {Phelan, Gabriel C. and Whelan, John T.}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/20de374638407dfcdc45057b3668113cd/dfirth}, description = {Hierarchical Bayesian Bradley-Terry for Applications in Major League Baseball}, interhash = {9ae4aa65125833ca43274fe07a5cf898}, intrahash = {0de374638407dfcdc45057b3668113cd}, keywords = {bradley-terry sport}, note = {cite arxiv:1712.05879}, timestamp = {2018-01-08T13:01:45.000+0100}, title = {Hierarchical Bayesian Bradley-Terry for Applications in Major League Baseball}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1712.05879}, year = 2017 }