0000000000178112
AUTHOR
Ramón Sala
Fuzzy Linear Programming in Practice: An Application to the Spanish Football League
FLP problems are perhaps one of the most and best studied topics of Soft Computing, and are among the most fruitful in applications and in theoretical and practical results. Areas of application of FLP problems are many and varied and in fact suppose an extraordinary example of technology transfer in action. In this paper, Fuzzy Linear Programming models are applied to the European football game in which the inherent uncertainty of the parameters relating to the football teams in the Spanish Football League serve to establish these models and so optimize the returns of the investments made to maintain a high quality competition. In this context, fuzzy DEA models are established which provid…
RANKING DECISION MAKING UNITS BY MEANS OF SOFT COMPUTING DEA MODELS
This paper presents a method for ranking a set of decision making units according to their level of efficiency and which takes into account uncertainty in the data. Efficiency is analysed using fuzzy DEA techniques and the ranking is based on the statistical analysis of cases that include representative situations. The method enables the removal of the sometimes unrealistic hypothesis of a perfect trade-off between increased inputs and outputs. This model is compared with other DEA models that work with imprecise or fuzzy data. As an illustration, we apply our ranking method to the evaluation of a group of Spanish seaports, as well as teams playing in the Spanish football league. We compar…
Equilibrio competitivo en Liga española de futbol de Primera División: Un test de Montecarlo basado en datos funcionales
The supremacy of a few teams over the other participants is a common factor in the major European football leagues. The Spanish First Division league is not an exception. In order to demonstrate this fact, functional data analysis is used to analyze football league classifications for last ten seasons, 2002-03 to 2011-12. Not only the use of these techniques distinguish this work from similar, another distinctive feature is the use of a non-uniform probability distribution on the three possible outcomes of a match, obtained from the results of the 3800 matches of the 10 seasons taking into account the difference between the categories of the teams in the match. A Monte Carlo test allows to …
Updating input–output matrices: assessing alternatives through simulation
A problem that frequently arises in economics, demography, statistics, transportation planning and stochastic modelling is how to adjust the entries of a matrix to fulfil row and column aggregation constraints. Biproportional methods in general and the so-called RAS algorithm in particular, have been used for decades to find solutions to this type of problem. Although alternatives exist, the RAS algorithm and its extensions are still the most popular. Apart from some interesting empirical and theoretical properties, tradition, simplicity and very low computational costs are among the reasons behind the great success of RAS. Nowadays computer hardware and software have made alternative proce…
The Spanish Football Crisis
Abstract This article analyses the economic results of Spanish professional football teams using data collected over the past few years. These data differ substantially from the information presented in the annual reports of the “Liga de Futbol Profesional” (Spanish professional football league), which are obtained from the initial budgets elaborated each season. Special attention is paid to the two most important teams in the Spanish league: Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. The results of this research show that Spanish football has the same problems as those evidenced by the Italian and English football leagues and, therefore, requires similar solutions in order to be able to survive in fort…
Increasing offensive or defensive efficiency? An analysis of Italian and Spanish football☆
This paper analyses technical efficiency of Italian and Spanish football during three recent seasons, to shed light on the sport performance of professional football clubs. To achieve this we have used mathematical optimisation methods, particularly DEA models, which enable the calculation of the frontiers of efficient production. Some of the most interesting results are the following. Firstly, the Spanish league is clearly more homogeneous and competitive than the Italian league. Secondly, to obtain a better classification in the Italian league, it is much more important to improve defensive, rather than offensive, efficiency. The popular maxim holds in Italy: the best attack begins with a…
A Portfolio Problem with Uncertainty
In this paper we present two models for cash flow matching with an uncertain level of payments at each due date. To solve the problem of minimising the initial investment we use the scenario method proposed by Dembo, and the robust optimisation method proposed by Mulvey et al. We unify these optimisation methods in a general co-ordinated model that guarantees a match under every scenario. This general model is also a multi-objective programming problem. We illustrate this methodology in a problem with several scenarios.
A comparison of nonparametric methods in the graduation of mortality: Application to data from the Valencia Region (Spain)
[EN] The nonparametric graduation of mortality data aims to estimate death rates by carrying out a smoothing of the crude rates obtained directly from original data. The main difference with regard to parametric models is that the assumption of an age-dependent function is unnecessary, which is advantageous when the information behind the model is unknown, as one cause of error is often the choice of an inappropriate model. This paper reviews the various alternatives and presents their application to mortality data from the Valencia Region, Spain. The comparison leads us to the conclusion that the best model is a smoothing by means of Generalised Additive Models (GAM) with splines. The most…