> Your response is very vague. I'm not sure why this is so, but I can > guess: > > 1. You are trying to use an approach that will work for many different > situations, so you haven't yet come up with a common approach that > applies to all situations. > > 2. You've just started working on the problem and haven't yet had time > to provide firm operational definitions. > > 3. You are hoping to patent your approach and need to keep your > competitors from finding out what you're working on. > > 4. You are trying to understand the problem from a very abstract level. > > 5. You are involved in some sort of illegal sports betting.
1 and 2 probably apply most. 3 James Bond lives next door :) 4 a bit. 5 is not illegal in my country. I was vague because I was looking for some general approaches to investigate. I am not trying to prejudge any method. But I wouldn't call it vague I would call it limited. I was not looking for answers as to the pros and cons of performance measures and if/how they can or cannot be used - although any such replies are gratefully received - as such questions may come eventually. I don't want to spend months on just this subject because I see the ranking as being a parameter in a wider model. That model may be a one of a dozen types, I am not prejudging that either although I have already formulated "candidate" models - I don't see that the specifics of the model should affect the formulation of this metric, as I am going to use it as a parameter to the model - not as *the* target to be used for confidence intervals etc, or to directly estimate the likelihood of a given outcome. And more generally, I 'know' that recency weighted performance measures are significant as I have read papers which indicate this. However they have not described the techniques used in calculating this measure. I appreciate all the other points you have made. But I dont see that the specifics of the sport are relevant - particularly as I would like to apply the technique across many sports in any case - but of course I am starting with one in particular. I suppose, I was looking for a survey of the techiques which could be applied to my question/problem. Your original answer was useful and another poster recommended ARIMA methods, which again I can investigate. > I hope you don't interpret all these questions as an attack. It is very > hard to define these terms well. Quite often, the best thing that a > statistical consultant can do is to get the client to characterize > his/her problem more precisely. > Of couse not :) I am happy to receive 'negative' responses if they are framed reasonably. But in many ways, if I knew how to frame the *question* to everyones satisfaction then I would not need to ask the question at all, as I would already have more than an inkling of the answer - of *a* way to go :) After all, we all know the answer to the universe is 42. Sid . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
