Comments on: Let’s Write This Paper (Updated With A Summary Of The Comments)

By: Jim Stein

Jim Stein — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:42:51 +0000

I haven’t read a lot about this, but the problem reminds me of one that seems related. Suppose you have a contest with an elimination round followed by a final round, and a set of rules. My guess is that determining whether that set of rules is incentive-compatible is an NP-hard problem — it seems to resemble satisfiability, which is known to be NP-hard. Also, incentive compatibility, at least the definition I saw in Wikipedia, reminded me of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem — which raises the possibility that you may be drawing dead. I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable to go beyond that.

By: S

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:04:19 +0000

So, are you guys actually writing a paper? Please do!

By: Gianni De Fraja

Gianni De Fraja — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 07:33:36 +0000

how about:

after the round robin phase, a new draw is made, with (i) either no seeds (ii) or with seeds determined by ranking within the round robin group (eg a group winner will be matched to a group runner-up).

incidentally (ii) is exactly the mechanism used by the (soccer) Champions league in Europe.

By: Jeff L

Jeff L — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 20:28:13 +0000

Giving the higher ranked teams a choice in their match ups gives them too much of an advantage when skill is not an ordinal value and some styles perform better than others. This is especially the case when teams from the same group (country in this case) are in the pairings and one sees they have an opportunity to knock out someone who is good against their other team.

The miscellaneous option to let the winner pick a W or L right after the match will avoid fake matches (The Sirlin link above is good), but it still gives an unfair advantage to matches scheduled later.

By: jeff

jeff — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 18:17:49 +0000

I have noticed that too

By: Enrique

Enrique — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 19:46:22 +0000

I tried to link this post to the above MR post, but MR doesn’t let me — whatever happened to reciprocal altruism?

By: Vincent

Vincent — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 20:23:59 +0000

I know this procedure from the final rounds of the K1 Grand Prix.
The last 8 fighters competing in the finals qualify through minor tournaments. In an event prior to the fights, each fighter gets assigned a numbeer (1-8) by lottery which determines the order of choosing. The first one arbitrarily picks a slot and can only chose when to fight. The second one can then choose to directly fight the first one or pick another of the remaining 7 slots… and so on.
Fighters always strategically place themselves against weaker opponents or opponents that suit their style better. Every once in a while, this is used to make statements to show toughness by picking a very strong opponent in the first round..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-1_World_Grand_Prix#Match-Ups
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-1_World_Grand_Prix_2009_Final#Match_Ups

By: Olympic Game Theory

Olympic Game Theory — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 11:34:21 +0000

[...] in the badminton tournament where some teams tried to lose, the cyclists are trying to win so going slow isn’t considered unsporting but it does make [...]

By: David Miller

David Miller — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:46:21 +0000

+Michael Nuwer: Wow, great story. This would be solved by allowing Austria to forfeit the game down by one goal. It certainly highlights the problems of using goal differentials as a tiebreaker.

By: David Miller

David Miller — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:40:29 +0000

+Michael Nuwer: I think it would be fun to see the teams struggle with managing the image of disrespect. Just picture the pre-game interviews…