The effects of draw restrictions on knockout tournaments

The paper analyses how draw constraints influence the outcome of a knockout tournament. The research question is inspired by European club football competitions, where the organiser generally imposes an association constraint in the first round of the knockout phase: teams from the same country cannot be drawn against each other. Its effects are explored in both theoretical and simulation models. An association constraint in the first round(s) is found to increase the likelihood of same nation matchups to approximately the same extent in each subsequent round. If the favourite teams are concentrated in some associations, they will have a higher probability to win the tournament under this policy but the increase is less than linear if it is used in more rounds. Our results can explain the recent introduction of the association constraint for both the knockout round play-offs with 16 teams and the Round of 16 in the UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, 4 table

Інформаційне обґрунтування завоювання Російською імперією західноукраїнських земель у 1914 р.

The article deals with the peculiarities of ideological and propaganda substantiation of the process of Eastern Galicia, Northern Bukovina, Zakarpattia by the Russian Empire at the initial stage of the First World War on the basis of source materials of Ukrainian governorates of South-West Kray (Kyiv, Volyn and Podillia). The main thematic areas of press publications, the content and specificity of appeals and brochures’ informative filling are noted. It is examined that the imperial authorities began to actively ideological myths propaganda from the first days of the war about the process of the “collecting Rus’ lands” (“zbyrannia zemel ruskykh”*) and that the Galician population is a fraternal people who needs a long-awaited “liberation”. The mass media used various techniques and mechanisms of information influence on the formation of public consciousness in order to overpersuade the society in the truthfulness of the aforementioned assertions and for the formation of a positive attitude towards the occupation of Western Ukrainian lands. The Orthodox clergy and the church mass media, which supported the official policy of the government and widely propagated the idea of the liberation of Eastern Galicia, Northern Bukovina and Zakarpattia population from Roman, Catholic oppression, played an important role in the ideological course of the imperial authorities.крито особливості ідейно-пропагандистського обґрунтування процесу завоювання Російською імперією Східної Галичини, Північної Буковини та Закарпаття на початковому етапі Першої світової війни. Висвітлено основні тематичні напрями публікаційних повідомлень преси, зміст і специфіку інформативного наповнення відозв та брошур. З’ясовано, що з перших днів війни імперський уряд приступив до активної пропаганди ідеологічних міфів про процес «зби- рання земель руських», про те, що галицьке населення є братнім народом, який потребує 72 ISSN 2524-0757 Київські історичні студії: науковий журнал • № 2 (7), 2018 р. довгоочікуваного «визволення». З метою переконання суспільства у правдивості вищезазначе- них тверджень та формування позитивного ставлення до окупації західноукраїнських земель у засобах масової інформації застосовувалися різні прийоми та механізми інформаційного впливу на формування суспільної свідомості. Важливу роль в ідеологічному курсі імперського уряду відігравало православне духовенство та церковні ЗМІ, які підтримували офіційну полі- тику уряду й широко пропагували ідею про необхідність визволення населення Східної Галичини, Буковини та Закарпаття від римського, католицького гніту

A paradox of tournament seeding

A mathematical model of seeding is analysed for sports tournaments where the qualification is based on round-robin contests. The conditions of strategyproofness are found to be quite restrictive: if each team takes its own coefficient (a measure of its past performance), only one or all of them should qualify from every round-robin contest. Thus the standard draw system creates incentives for tanking in order to be assigned to a stronger pot as each team prefers to qualify with teams having a lower coefficient. Major soccer competitions are shown to suffer from this weakness. Strategyproofness can be guaranteed by giving to each team the highest coefficient of all teams that are ranked lower in its round-robin contest. The proposal is illustrated by the 2020/21 UEFA Champions League.Comment: 23 pages, 3 table

Revisiting Modal Imagination

Conceivability arguments are quite common in philosophy. Given the continued prevalence of such arguments, the philosopher would do well to consider whether the inference from conceivability to possibility is in fact justified. In this paper, I reject Alex Byrne’s skeptical arguments against David Chalmers’s account of modal imagination. I suggest that, in regard to mental imagery, Byrne’s account of sensuous imagination is committed to the dubious claim that mental images are sufficient to individuate imaginings, whereas Chalmers’s account is not. On the contrary, in order to be successful, some imaginings must involve or co-occur with further, non-imagistic features or faculties that are necessary for their individuation. I briefly consider some such possible features and conclude that modal imagination as conceived of by Chalmers does not reduce to sensuous imagination. Consequently, the reliability of modal imagination as a guide to possibility is not necessarily undermined by Byrne’s broader critique of sensuous imagination

Spartan Daily, October 16, 1986

Volume 87, Issue 35https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/7492/thumbnail.jp