Round-robin tournaments with minimum number of breaks and two teams per club

We study round-robin tournaments for 2n teams. Here n is either interpreted as the number of clubs, each having two teams, or the number of strength groups with two teams each. For even n we give a construction of a single round-robin tournament for 2n teams with 2n - 2 breaks, where the teams of the same club have complementary home-away patterns and play against each other in the first round. If the pairs of teams are strength groups, then a cyclic permutation of the constructed schedule results in a group-balanced tournament

An instance data repository for the round-robin sports timetabling problem

The sports timetabling problem is a combinatorial optimization problem that consists of creating a timetable that defines against whom, when and where teams play games. This is a complex matter, since real-life sports timetabling applications are typically highly constrained. The vast amount and variety of constraints and the lack of generally accepted benchmark problem instances make that timetable algorithms proposed in the literature are often tested on just one or two specific seasons of the competition under consideration. This is problematic since only a few algorithmic insights are gained. To mitigate this issue, this article provides a problem instance repository containing over 40 different types of instances covering artificial and real-life problem instances. The construction of such a repository is not trivial, since there are dozens of constraints that need to be expressed in a standardized format. For this, our repository relies on RobinX, an XML-supported classification framework. The resulting repository provides a (non-exhaustive) overview of most real-life sports timetabling applications published over the last five decades. For every problem, a short description highlights the most distinguishing characteristics of the problem. The repository is publicly available and will be continuously updated as new instances or better solutions become available

Solving Challenging Real-World Scheduling Problems

This work contains a series of studies on the optimization of three real-world scheduling problems, school timetabling, sports scheduling and staff scheduling. These challenging problems are solved to customer satisfaction using the proposed PEAST algorithm. The customer satisfaction refers to the fact that implementations of the algorithm are in industry use. The PEAST algorithm is a product of long-term research and development. The first version of it was introduced in 1998. This thesis is a result of a five-year development of the algorithm. One of the most valuable characteristics of the algorithm has proven to be the ability to solve a wide range of scheduling problems. It is likely that it can be tuned to tackle also a range of other combinatorial problems. The algorithm uses features from numerous different metaheuristics which is the main reason for its success. In addition, the implementation of the algorithm is fast enough for real-world use.Siirretty Doriast

League competitions and fairness

We formulate two fairness principles and characterize the league competition systems that satisfy them. The first principle requires that all players should have the same chance of being the final winner if all players are equally strong, while the second states that the league competition should not favor weaker players. We apply these requirements to a class of systems which includes round-robin tournaments as a particular case

League competitions and fairness

We formulate two fairness principles and characterize the league competition systems that satisfy them. The first principle requires that all players should have the same chance of being the final winner if all players are equally strong, while the second states that the league competition should not favor weaker players. We apply these requirements to a class of systems which includes round-robin tournaments as a particular case.Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (Project ECO2015-65031-R MINECO/FEDER, UE) is acknowledged. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL

Continued Sport Participation and the Negotiation of Constraints

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the social processes that support ongoing involvement in recreational sport and the negotiation of constraints that would otherwise limit participation. This purpose is explored through three studies. Study 1 examined the contributions of a social group to women’s continued participation in golf through ethnographic methods. Data were collected through an ethnography of a women’s social group that regularly played golf, and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Findings suggested two overarching themes that explained persistence in golf for these women: connecting with group members, and constructing a group culture. Importantly, the processes that facilitated the development of group connections were also identified. Study 2 develops an understanding of constraints and negotiation processes in a self-organized middle age women’s recreation group. While research has found that people prefer to participate with others, work examining constraints to participation have primarily taken an individual perspective. Data were collected and analyzed the same way they were in Study 1. While some of these constraints influenced recreation involvements negatively, the findings predominantly describe six ways in which the group has collectively developed strategies that enabled them to negotiate most constraints. Study 3 extends recent work on the constraint negotiation process through the addition and refinement of key factors, within the context of intramural sports involving undergraduate university students. Results of the structural equation modeling analysis indicated that the perceived-constraint-effects model provided a good fit to the data, and supported the inclusion of ego involvement and motivation

Scheduling a non-professional indoor football league : a tabu search based approach

This paper deals with a real-life scheduling problem of a non-professional indoor football league. The goal is to develop a schedule for a time-relaxed, double round-robin tournament which avoids close successions of games involving the same team in a limited period of time. This scheduling problem is interesting, because games are not planned in rounds. Instead, each team provides time slots in which they can play a home game, and time slots in which they cannot play at all. We present an integer programming formulation and a heuristic based on tabu search. The core component of this algorithm consists of solving a transportation problem, which schedules (or reschedules) all home games of a team. Our heuristic generates schedules with a quality comparable to those found with IP solvers, however with considerably less computational effort. These schedules were approved by the league organizers, and used in practice for the seasons 2009-2010 till 2016-2017

The Boston Girls Sports & Physical Activity Project: Final Report to the Barr Foundation

The main goal of the three-year Boston Girls' Sports & Physical Activity Project (BGSPAP) was to create an integrated and sustainable network of community-based programs that use sports and physical activity to favorably influence the physical, psychological, and social development of urban girls. The BGSPAP aimed to provide economically disadvantaged urban girls with opportunities to participate in sports and physical activity. The BGSPAP also aspired to upgrade sports and physical activity programming for girls in order to overcome gender biases built into the Boston schools and community programs. The number and quality of sports and exercise programs for Boston girls were not at par with those of Boston boys