This House Proves that Debating is Harder than Soccer

During the last twenty years, a lot of research was conducted on the sport elimination problem: Given a sports league and its remaining matches, we have to decide whether a given team can still possibly win the competition, i.e., place first in the league at the end. Previously, the computational complexity of this problem was investigated only for games with two participating teams per game. In this paper we consider Debating Tournaments and Debating Leagues in the British Parliamentary format, where four teams are participating in each game. We prove that it is NP-hard to decide whether a given team can win a Debating League, even if at most two matches are remaining for each team. This contrasts settings like football where two teams play in each game since there this case is still polynomial time solvable. We prove our result even for a fictitious restricted setting with only three teams per game. On the other hand, for the common setting of Debating Tournaments we show that this problem is fixed parameter tractable if the parameter is the number of remaining rounds $k$. This also holds for the practically very important question of whether a team can still qualify for the knock-out phase of the tournament and the combined parameter $k + b$ where $b$ denotes the threshold rank for qualifying. Finally, we show that the latter problem is polynomial time solvable for any constant $k$ and arbitrary values $b$ that are part of the input.Comment: 18 pages, to appear at FUN 201

How Hard Is It to Control an Election by Breaking Ties?

We study the computational complexity of controlling the result of an election by breaking ties strategically. This problem is equivalent to the problem of deciding the winner of an election under parallel universes tie-breaking. When the chair of the election is only asked to break ties to choose between one of the co-winners, the problem is trivially easy. However, in multi-round elections, we prove that it can be NP-hard for the chair to compute how to break ties to ensure a given result. Additionally, we show that the form of the tie-breaking function can increase the opportunities for control. Indeed, we prove that it can be NP-hard to control an election by breaking ties even with a two-stage voting rule.Comment: Revised and expanded version including longer proofs and additional result

Manipulating Tournaments in Cup and Round Robin Competitions

In sports competitions, teams can manipulate the result by, for instance, throwing games. We show that we can decide how to manipulate round robin and cup competitions, two of the most popular types of sporting competitions in polynomial time. In addition, we show that finding the minimal number of games that need to be thrown to manipulate the result can also be determined in polynomial time. Finally, we show that there are several different variations of standard cup competitions where manipulation remains polynomial.Comment: Proceedings of Algorithmic Decision Theory, First International Conference, ADT 2009, Venice, Italy, October 20-23, 200

Ranking structures and Rank-Rank Correlations of Countries. The FIFA and UEFA cases

Ranking of agents competing with each other in complex systems may lead to paradoxes according to the pre-chosen different measures. A discussion is presented on such rank-rank, similar or not, correlations based on the case of European countries ranked by UEFA and FIFA from different soccer competitions. The first question to be answered is whether an empirical and simple law is obtained for such (self-) organizations of complex sociological systems with such different measuring schemes. It is found that the power law form is not the best description contrary to many modern expectations. The stretched exponential is much more adequate. Moreover, it is found that the measuring rules lead to some inner structures, in both cases.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, 24 references, 3 tables; to be published in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

The Path of Most Resistance: The Long Road Toward Gender Equity in Intercollegiate Athletics

While sports have long played an important role in educating boys and young men in leadership, physical fitness and competitive skills, only recent- ly have girls and young women had the chance to benefit from athletic opportunities. Over two decades of experience with a federal statute pro- hibiting sex discrimination in school sports programs have brought important successes in opening doors for female athletes. However, enforcement of equal opportunity in this area has encountered strong resistance from the athletic establishment, which has fought efforts to equalize resources and opportunities for young women. Heightened enforcement of equal athletic opportunity in the 1990s has rekindled old opposition to basic notions of gender fairness in sports. React- ing to the recent successes of female athletes in the courts, both college foot- ball and other men\u27s sports advocates have taken the offensive in challeng- ing the law\u27s requirements, arguing that men are more interested in sports than women and therefore deserve the lion\u27s share of resources and opportu- nities. While such challenges have not succeeded, future progress toward gender equity in sports requires a renewed commitment to the underlying principle that female athletes are as deserving of sports opportunities as their male counterparts. This Article discusses the recent backlash against the legal requirements governing sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs in the con- text of the history and enforcement of the law. Part I discusses the require- ments of the law, its legislative and interpretive history, and recent advances in enforcement. Part ..

The Path of Most Resistance: The Long Road Toward Gender Equity in Intercollegiate Athletics

While sports have long played an important role in educating boys and young men in leadership, physical fitness and competitive skills, only recent- ly have girls and young women had the chance to benefit from athletic opportunities. Over two decades of experience with a federal statute pro- hibiting sex discrimination in school sports programs have brought important successes in opening doors for female athletes. However, enforcement of equal opportunity in this area has encountered strong resistance from the athletic establishment, which has fought efforts to equalize resources and opportunities for young women. Heightened enforcement of equal athletic opportunity in the 1990s has rekindled old opposition to basic notions of gender fairness in sports. React- ing to the recent successes of female athletes in the courts, both college foot- ball and other men\u27s sports advocates have taken the offensive in challeng- ing the law\u27s requirements, arguing that men are more interested in sports than women and therefore deserve the lion\u27s share of resources and opportu- nities. While such challenges have not succeeded, future progress toward gender equity in sports requires a renewed commitment to the underlying principle that female athletes are as deserving of sports opportunities as their male counterparts. This Article discusses the recent backlash against the legal requirements governing sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs in the con- text of the history and enforcement of the law. Part I discusses the require- ments of the law, its legislative and interpretive history, and recent advances in enforcement. Part ..

Sports, Inc. Volume 3, Issue 1

The ILR Cornell Sports Business Society magazine is a semester publication titled Sports, Inc. This publication serves as a space for our membership to publish and feature in-depth research and well-thought out ideas to advance the world of sport. The magazine can be found in the Office of Student Services and is distributed to alumni who come visit us on campus. Issues are reproduced here with permission of the ILR Cornell Sports Business Society.https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/sportsinc/1003/thumbnail.jp