Queensland Branch Meeting: A Unified Bayesian Model for Predicting Volleyball Games

Please join us online for the October Queensland Branch Meeting on the 20th of October. The seminar will start at 17:00 (AEST), with a branch meeting at 16:30. Please find details for the seminar below.

When:

4:30 PM - 5:00 PM (AEST) Branch Meeting

5:00 PM - 6:00 PM (AEST) Seminar

Wednesday 20th October 2021

Location: Online - Zoom

Please note that the seminar will be recorded and might be put on YouTube or similar platform.

A Unified Bayesian Model for Predicting Volleyball Games

Abstract: Volleyball is a team sport with unique and specific characteristics. We introduce a new two-level hierarchical Bayesian model which accounts for these volleyball-specific characteristics. In the first level, we model the set outcome with a simple logistic regression model. Conditionally on the winner of the set, in the second level, we use a truncated negative binomial distribution for the points earned by the losing team. An additional Poisson-distributed inflation component is introduced to model the extra points played in the case that the two teams have a point difference less than two points. The number of points of the winner within each set is deterministically specified by the winner of the set and the points of the inflation component. The team-specific abilities and the home effect are used as covariates on all layers of the model (set, point and extra inflated points). The implementation of the proposed model on the Italian SuperLega 2017–2018 data shows exceptional reproducibility of the final league table and satisfactory predictive ability.

Presenter: Prof. Ioannis Ntzoufras, Department of Statistics, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, GREECE

Ioannis Ntzoufras is a Professor in Statistics at the Department of Statistics of the Athens University of Economics and Business where he currently serves as the Head of the Department (2020-22). He holds the Lefkopoulion Award of the Greek Statistical Institute (2000) and an honorable mention in the subject of Mathematics at the 2009 PROSE Awards for the book “Bayesian Modeling Using WinBUGS”, published by Wiley. He is currently associate editor at the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C (Applied Statistics) and at the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. He is the author of 62 scientific journals with more than 4700 citations (h-index 25) in google scholar (data retrieved on 12/10/2021). He is currently working on research projects related with Bayesian statistical methodology, Bayesian variable selection, applied statistics, biostatistics, psychometrics and sport analytics.