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IMA Journal of Management Mathematics Advance Access originally published online on August 29, 2008
IMA Journal of Management Mathematics 2009 20(2):185-199; doi:10.1093/imaman/dpn018
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© The authors 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. All rights reserved.

This article appears in the following IMA Journal of Management Mathematics issue: Special Issue Mathematics in Sport [View the issue table of contents]

Evaluating relative performances in disabled sports competitions

David F. Percy{dagger}

Centre for Operational Research and Applied Statistics, Salford Business School, University of Salford, Greater Manchester M5 4WT, UK

D. Bruce Warner

ABB Sécheron, 4–6 rue des Sablières, Meyrin, CH 1211, Geneva, Switzerland

{dagger} Email: d.f.percy{at}salford.ac.uk

Received on 12 September 2007. Accepted on 17 July 2008.

Handicapping systems play important roles in many sports. This paper focuses on disabled sports competitions, which primarily aim to encourage participation. Nevertheless, prizes are awarded for relative performances and should be allocated fairly. We review handicapping procedures specifically for disabled Alpine skiing and identify imperfections with this system, particularly how historical and new results are combined to determine scaling factors. Significant problems also arise due to different class sizes and variations in courses and conditions. We investigate the difficulties in establishing a suitable handicapping system and propose modifications to the existing procedures that improve their fairness. We develop simple mathematical models and statistical analyses that might be suitable, based on results data relating to several years of competition, and we evaluate the performance of our proposed method in comparison with that of the existing approach.

Keywords: factor system; handicap; Paralympics; shrinkage; sport


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