Are football referees really biased and inconsistent?: evidence on the incidence of disciplinary sanction in the English Premier League

Summary.  The paper presents a statistical analysis of patterns in the incidence of disciplinary sanction (yellow and red cards) that were taken against players in the English Premier League over the period 1996–2003. Several questions concerning sources of inconsistency and bias in refereeing standards are examined. Evidence is found to support a time consistency hypothesis, that the average incidence of disciplinary sanction is predominantly stable over time. However, a refereeing consistency hypothesis, that the incidence of disciplinary sanction does not vary between referees, is rejected. The tendency for away teams to incur more disciplinary points than home teams cannot be attributed to the home advantage effect on match results and appears to be due to a refereeing bias favouring the home team.     

Assessing goodness-of-fit for evaluation of dose-proportionality

For the clinical development of a new drug, the determination of dose-proportionality is an essential part of the pharmacokinetic evaluations, which may provide early indications of non-linear pharmacokinetics and may help to identify sub-populations with divergent clearances. Prior to making any conclusions regarding dose-proportionality, the goodness-of-fit of the model must be assessed to evaluate the model performance. We propose the use of simulation-based visual predictive checks to improve the validity of dose-proportionality conclusions for complex designs. We provide an illustrative example and include a table to facilitate review by regulatory authorities.     

Innovationsberatung: Ansätze für Veränderung und Neues

In this paper we argue that a systematic organizational consulting approach can be supportive in fostering innovation and change processes in companies. We discuss the consulting approach in three steps: First, we present a scientific meta-definition of the term “innovation”, which helps to identify the major challenges for companies in being innovative. Second, we raise urgent questions which companies have to face in order to address these major challenges. Third, we discuss tools from our organizational consulting experience that support companies in answering these questions on their way to innovation success, therefore providing a useful basis for innovation consulting.     

Reviews

ANOTHER RUSSIA Through the Eyes of the New Soviet Photographers: A Lesson in Looking and Not Seeing Facts on File, 1986

Camera Culture, by Halla Beloff

Poletown Lives! Film/Videotape: 52 mins.

Exploding Into Life, by Dorthea Lynch and Eugene Richards

Documentary Filmmaking: A Closer Look A Seminar

Videology and Utopia: Explorations in a New Medium A. Willener, G. Milliard, and A. Ganty     

Testing Branching Process Estimators of Cascading Failure with Data from a Simulation of Transmission Line Outages

We suggest a statistical estimator to quantify the propagation of cascading transmission line failures in large blackouts of electric power systems. We use a Galton‐Watson branching process model of cascading failure and the standard Harris estimator of the mean propagation modified to work when the process saturates at a maximum number of components. If the mean number of initial failures and the mean propagation are estimated, then the branching process model predicts the distribution of the total number of failures. We initially test this prediction on failure data generated by a simulation of cascading transmission line outages on two standard test systems. We discuss the effectiveness of the estimator in terms of how many cascades need to be simulated to predict the distribution of the total number of line outages accurately.     

Robust regression through robust covariances

This paper discusses the estimation of regression parameters after summarizing the data by a covariance matrix of the concatenated vector of explanatory variables and response variable. A robust estimate of the covariance matrix leads to a robust regression estimator. An M-estimator at the covariance estimation step is studied in the paper, and the resulting regression estimator is compared to a few previously proposed robust regression estimators.     

Design of Auction Parameters to Reduce the Effect of Collusion

Government departments are increasingly turning to auctions to procure goods and services. Collusion among bidders, however, reduces competition and raises winning bid prices. Since conventional collusion control measures based on the redesign of auction mechanisms are less effective in government procurement auctions, there is a need to devise control measures that decrease the effect of collusion. This article demonstrates how the principles of design of experiments can be applied in a system dynamics model to find the auction parameter values that substantially reduce the effect of collusion in government procurement auctions. This research makes a number of contributions. First, it develops a feedback‐based dynamic mechanism of collusion in government procurement auctions. The mechanism proposes the winning bid price as being determined not by the total number of bidders but by the number of independent bidders. It defines each cartel as one independent bidder regardless of the number of bidders in the cartel. Second, the mechanism is tested by developing a system dynamics model to government auctions for procuring contracts for roadwork projects in India. Third, the principles of experimental design are applied to find the auction parameter values that ensure high bid participation and low winning price‐to‐reserve price ratios.