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Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science

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Introduction

The history of the applications of quantitative methods and systems analysis to sports events is very much the history of systems analysis and its applications to many fields of human endeavor. For a thorough review of all the sports applications up to 1976, see Ladany and Machol (1977), while for the second half of the same two-pronged effort which culminated in invited research articles of the mid 1970s, see Machol et al. (1976). A further review, incorporating most of the later applications, can be found in Gerchak (1994). In 2005 the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports was established, publishing a wide range of relevant O.R. articles. A Special Issue of Sports Management, containing a variety of new O.R. sports papers, was edited by Ladany (2006). Many of the summaries incorporated here are based on the overview by Cochran (2008).

The first studies of sports were purely descriptive; the earliest such technical articles, on cricket, by Elderton (1909, 1927, 1945...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 653, 84105, Beer Sheva, Israel

    Shaul P. Ladany

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  1. Shaul P. Ladany
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  1. Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Saul I. Gass

  2. Robert H. Smith School of Business and Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Michael C. Fu

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Ladany, S.P. (2013). Sports. In: Gass, S.I., Fu, M.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1153-7_983

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