A note on symmetry reduction for circular traveling tournament problems

The traveling tournament problem (TTP) consists of finding a distance-minimal double round-robin tournament where the number of consecutive breaks is bounded. Easton et al. (2001) introduced the so-called circular TTP instances, where venues of teams are located on a circle. The distance between neighboring venues is one, so that the distance between any pair of teams is the distance on the circle. It is empirically proved that these instances are very hard to solve due to the inherent symmetry. This note presents new ideas to cut off essentially identical parts of the solution space. Enumerative solution approaches, e.g. relying on branch-and-bound, benefit from this reduction. We exemplify this benefit by modifying the DFS∗ algorithm of Uthus et al. (2009) and show that speedups can approximate factor 4n.     

A new branch-and-price algorithm for the traveling tournament problem

The traveling tournament problem (ttp) consists of finding a distance-minimal double round-robin tournament where the number of consecutive breaks is bounded. For solving the problem exactly, we propose a new branch-and-price approach. The starting point is a new compact formulation for the ttp. The corresponding extensive formulation resulting from a Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition is identical to one given by Easton, K., Nemhauser, G., Trick, M., 2003. Solving the traveling tournament problem: a combined interger programming and constraint programming approach. In: Burke, E., De Causmaecker, P. (Eds.), Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling IV, Volume 2740 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg, pp. 100–109, who suggest to solve the tour-generation subproblem by constraint programming. In contrast to their approach, our method explicitly utilizes the network structure of the compact formulation: First, the column-generation subproblem is a shortest-path problem with additional resource and task-elementarity constraints. We show that this problem can be reformulated as an ordinary shortest-path problem over an expanded network and, thus, be solved much faster. An exact variable elimination procedure then allows the reduction of the expanded networks while still guaranteeing optimality. Second, the compact formulation gives rise to supplemental branching rules, which are needed, since existing rules do not ensure integrality in all cases. Third, non-repeater constraints are added dynamically to the master problem only when violated. The result is a fast exact algorithm, which improves many lower bounds of knowingly hard ttp instances from the literature. For some instances, solutions are proven optimal for the first time.     

Final-offer arbitration in major league baseball: A nonparametric analysis

This study extends the non-parametric methodology for empirical efficiency analysis to allow for a double frontier based on perspective and applies the model to final-offer arbitration in major league baseball. Arbitration eligible players perceive their worth relative to other players who earn more with no better performance. Owners, on the other hand, perceive a player's value relative to other players performing as well with lower salaries. The two different perspectives give rise to different perceived frontiers. The purpose of this paper is to analyze arbitration using this approach.     

Using solution properties within an enumerative search to solve a sports league scheduling problem

This paper presents an enumerative approach for a particular sports league scheduling problem known as “Prob026” in CSPLib. Despite its exponential-time complexity, this simple method can solve all instances involving a number T of teams up to 50 in a reasonable amount of time while the best known tabu search and constraint programming algorithms are limited to T?40 and the direct construction methods available only solve instances where or T/2 is odd. Furthermore, solutions were also found for some T values up to 70. The proposed approach relies on discovering, by observation, interesting properties from solutions of small problem instances and then using these properties in the final algorithm to constraint the search process.     

动态联盟绩效评价的Fuzzy统计模型研究

针对企业动态联盟的绩效指标,利用模糊隶属度理论将绩效的定性评价转化为定量评价,将专家经验与数学模型结合起来确定各指标的权重,建立了企业动态联盟绩效评价的Fuzzy统计模型,并编出模型的计算机程序和软件,实现了评价的计算机操作.     

A branching scheme for finding cost-minimal round robin tournaments

Single round robin tournaments are a well known class of sports leagues schedules. We consider leagues with a set T of n teams where n is even. Costs are associated to each possible match. The goal is to find the minimum cost tournament among those having the minimum number of breaks. We pick up structural properties of home–away-pattern sets having the minimum number of breaks. A branching idea using these properties is developed in order to guide branching steps on the first levels of a branch-and-bound tree in order to avoid nodes corresponding to infeasible subproblems.     

Scheduling non-professional table-tennis leagues

In this paper we consider a sports league scheduling problem which occurs in planning non-professional table-tennis leagues. The problem consists in finding a schedule for a time-relaxed double round robin tournament where different hard and soft constraints have to be taken into account. We model the problem as an integer linear program and a multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem, respectively. Based on the second model a heuristic solution algorithm is proposed, which proceeds in two stages using local search and genetic algorithms. Computational results show the efficiency of the approaches.