Ranking Sports Teams in New Ways

Mathematicians introduce novel techniques for rating sports teams.
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Who's #1? — The Science of Rating and Ranking

Amy Langville, Associate Professor, Mathematics Department, College of Charleston

Carl Meyer, Professor of Mathematics, North Carolina State University

Inside Science Buzzwords:

  1. Ranking – In sports, the organization of individuals or teams in descending order of achievement.
  2. Matrix – An arrangement of numbers in rows and columns; mathematical operations such as multiplication and subtraction can be performed on various combinations of the numbers in the process of solving problems involving those numbers.
  3. Linear Algebra - An area of mathematics in which problems with multiple unknowns can be solved by using systems of equations that can each be graphed as a straight line.