Referee assignment in the Chilean football league using integer programming and patterns

This article uses integer linear programming to address the referee assignment problem in the First Division of the Chilean professional football league. The proposed approach considers balance in the number of matches each referee must officiate, the frequency of each referee being assigned to a given team, the distance each referee must travel over the course of a season, and the appropriate pairings of referee experience or skill category with the importance of the matches. Two methodologies are studied, one traditional and the other a pattern-based formulation inspired by the home-away patterns for scheduling season match calendars. Both methodologies are tested in real-world and experimental instances, reporting results that improve significantly on the manual assignments. The pattern-based formulation attains major reductions in execution times, solving real instances to optimality in just a few seconds, while the traditional one takes anywhere from several minutes to more than an hour.Fil: Alarcón, Fernando. Universidad de Chile; ChileFil: Duran, Guillermo Alfredo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Cálculo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Guajardo, Mario. Norwegian School of Economics; Norueg

A flexible mathematical model for the planning and designing of a sporting fixture by considering the assignment of referees

Indexación: Scopus.This paper deals with the problems faced with the designing and planning of a sporting fixture considering correct referee assignments. A non-linear binary program model is proposed to solve the problems, which aims to minimize the sums of the differences that exist between the requirements of each match and the quality of the referee assigned achieving the design of the most adequate referee for each match. The efficiency of the proposed model is proved using some real data obtained from various fixtures for sports such as soccer, volleyball, and basketball. The mathematical model is solved by using CPLEX 12.7.0., which allows the automatic linearization of the problems. The results obtained demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methodology for tackling problems, as well as its extension to other sporting disciplines, which require a similar type of planning. Similarly, given the robust nature of the proposed model, it is possible to implement other objective functions in accordance with the requirements of each league. © 2019 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada.http://growingscience.com/beta/ijiec/2960-a-flexible-mathematical-model-for-the-planning-and-designing-of-a-sporting-fixture-by-considering-the-assignment-of-referees.htm

Brew City Black Ball: Milwaukee as Microcosm of the Early-Twentieth Century Black Baseball Experience

While historians have learned a great deal about the Black professional baseball played during organized baseball’s Jim Crow era, there are many teams whose stories are yet to be told. Two of these teams, the McCoy-Nolan Giants and Milwaukee Bears, played their home games in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the 1920s. By exploring the untold histories of the McCoy-Nolan Giants and Milwaukee Bears, much can be learned about overarching themes in early-twentieth century Black professional baseball. By analyzing newspaper coverage of the McCoy-Nolan Giants, an independent barnstorming team without Negro League affiliation, important truths about the experience of Black baseball on the road come to light. Similarly, examining newspaper coverage of the 1923 Milwaukee Bears, a short-lived franchise in the Negro National League, highlights many of the league’s shortcomings, including franchise instability, scheduling inequities, the absence of Black ballpark ownership, and a general lack of cooperation between team owners. This analysis of the reasons behind the Bears’ failure to finish a full season in Milwaukee also sheds light on themes in the development of Black Milwaukee in that the city’s relatively small and working class Black population made Milwaukee a difficult market in which to attract fans

Air quality and error quantity: pollution and performance in a high-skilled, quality-focused occupation

We provide the first evidence that short-term exposure to air pollution affects the work performance of a group of highly-skilled, quality-focused employees. We repeatedly observe the decision-making of individual professional baseball umpires, quasi-randomly assigned to varying air quality across time and space. Unique characteristics of this setting combined with high-frequency data disentangle effects of multiple pollutants and identify previously under-explored acute effects. We find a 1 ppm increase in 3-hour CO causes an 11.5% increase in the propensity of umpires to make incorrect calls and a 10 mg/m3 increase in 12-hour PM2.5 causes a 2.6% increase. We control carefully for a variety of potential confounders and results are supported by robustness and falsification checks

Banned, Black, And Barnstorming: How Traveling Black Teams In The Great Depression Changed Kansas

In the 1870s and early 1880s, almost seventy African American men played for white owned ball clubs. By 1890, White owners reached an unwritten agreement to prevent African Americans from playing with white baseball players. Not until April 15, 1947, when Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers did a black baseball player play professionally with white players. It took the general manager of the Dodgers, Branch Ricky, almost a decade to get Robinson in a big league uniform. This meant for nearly sixty years, African Americans had to play separately. Before the creation of the Negro National League (NNL) in 1920, a few black businessmen attempted to create a baseball league for the country’s black population. In 1910, Beauregard Mosley sought to create the National Negro Baseball League (NNBL) with franchises in cities like Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City. The league would divide profits by giving the winner fifty percent, the loser thirty percent, and the owners twenty percent of the ticket sales. The league would employ its own umpires, with African Americans making up fifty percent. However, the NNBL never played a game. For the NNL, almost none of the owners found anyone willing to back a professional black league. The NNL had sparse attendance was sparse in many of the cities and advertising was difficult to obtain for black teams. Since many of the stadiums sat in dangerous parts of town, fewer people came out to watch games. The Kansas City Monarchs became the exception for league teams. They tended to draw more than any other NNL team, and often outsold white baseball games in the region. Several times clubs appeared and disappeared within a year. In Cleveland, between 1922 and 1933, they had seven different clubs in the NNL. Since owners often underpaid players, teams lost players every year. Players went to the team offered them the most money. This movement of players meant teams could fold because they could not field a proper club. This era was the golden age of barnstorming teams. Since the Depression left many in the cities without disposable incomes, black teams took to the road. Only the state of Kansas allowed games between blacks and whites in the 1920s and 1930s. These tours included teams such as the Kansas City Monarchs and the Kansas City Colored Clowns, to teams referred to as only the “colored boys.” Baseball teams traveled all across the state to play. Kansas even allowed interracial games and eventually an interracial team well before the rest of the country. Many Kansas demonstrated more progressive attitudes with regards to race relations, though segregation and racial animosity still played a daily role in black players’ lives

Outside the Lines of Gilded Age Baseball: Profits, Beer, and the Origins of the Brotherhood War

In 1890, members of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players elected to secede from the National League and form their own organization, which they called the Players League. The players objected to several business practices of the National League, including aspects of the reserve clause in player contracts, the Brush Classification Plan to control their salaries, the buying and selling of players, and fines for various infractions. This dissertation explains how these events combined to produce the revolt by the players at the conclusion of the 1889 season. It also examines various other important aspects of 1880s baseball, including abuse of alcohol, treatments of umpires, physical training techniques, violence on the field, cheating, gambling, mascots, team finances, and racism in baseball. The dissertation illuminates various Social and economic aspects of life in Gilded Age America as well. Finally, it helps explain the importance of a little-understood era in the baseball’s history that lasted from 1885-1889 and contributed to confirming baseball’s status as America’s national sport

Ahead of the Curve : A History of the National Baseball Congress Tournament in Wichita, Kansas,1935-2005

This thesis provides a history of the National Baseball Congress (NBC) tournament in Wichita, Kansas, from its founding in 1935 to 2005. The NBC tournament, since its inception, has had an impact culturally, economically, and socially on the city of Wichita, and to a lesser degree, an impact on Major League Baseball and other facets of organized baseball. By using a decade-by-decade over view of the history of the NBC tournament, one finds how social and cultural events have played a role in the success of the NBC tournament, and how the tournament influenced the baseball world. Raymond Hap” Dumont, the founder and master promoter of the NBC tournament, created an environment that would push his tournament to the forefront of the minds of Americans. He did this by using the mass media and by instituting unique promotions to enhance the game of baseball. Dumont also created opportunities for minorities, military baseball teams, and eventually college baseball players to participate in his semipro tournament. This thesis, based on newspaper articles, Raymond Dumont\u27s biography, and other assorted histories of baseball in the twentieth century, argues that the success of the NBC tournament was due to Dumont\u27s ingenuity and desire to succeed. When Dumont passed away, the tournament went through a series of ownership changes that initially weakened the overall economic effectiveness of the tournament. However, the originality and tradition of the tournament endured because of the dedicated employees that Dumont hired to help run the event. When the Rich family from Buffalo, New York, bought the National Baseball Congress in 1985, they also purchased a Wichita institution, a tradition that has endured into the twenty-first century

A Schism in Youth Baseball and its Lingering Effects: A Case Study of One Community’s Experience

This case study explored the experience of parent coaches in an urban, Midwestern youth baseball setting. Data collection included personal communication with fifteen expert coaches, along with an examination of historical emails, league records and newspaper articles. The initial research questions focused on how coaches create meaning for youth sport participants. However, a schism event and its effects emerged as a significant theme, along with the resulting challenges faced by Little League coaches. The Little League organization operated as the sole option for youth baseball since 1951. In 2001, an alternative “Traveling” option began competing with Little League by branding itself as “competing at the highest level of competition.” Little League symbolically became a “recreational” option, inconsistent with the myth of the Little League World Series. This increasingly competitive context made the job of a Little League coach more difficult. Participants discussed managing perceived favoritism and balancing the objectives of “competing” and “having fun” as the top challenges, and identified the attributes of an effective coach as relating to others, managing talent and leveraging rules. A dynamic coaching model emerged with four coach types, differentiated by baseball intelligence and talent management skills. Findings suggest additional research on the value of a child committing to a single sport, how to improve youth coach recruiting and development, and to better understand the business of youth sports

A flexible mathematical model for the planning and designing of a sporting fixture by considering the assignment of referees

This paper deals with the problems faced with the designing and planning of a sporting fixture considering correct referee assignments. A non-linear binary program model is proposed to solve the problems, which aims to minimize the sums of the differences that exist between the requirements of each match and the quality of the referee assigned achieving the design of the most adequate referee for each match. The efficiency of the proposed model is proved using some real data obtained from various fixtures for sports such as soccer, volleyball, and basketball. The mathematical model is solved by using CPLEX 12.7.0., which allows the automatic linearization of the problems. The results obtained demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methodology for tackling problems, as well as its extension to other sporting disciplines, which require a similar type of planning. Similarly, given the robust nature of the proposed model, it is possible to implement other objective functions in accordance with the requirements of each league