Speaker: Steve Devlin, University of San Francisco

Rating and ranking problems are ubiquitous. Who is the best chess player in the world? Which is the best team in college football? Which web pages are most relevant to my query? Who is the best candidate for city council (or President)? These are all hard questions without a ground-truth to use in evaluating answers. In this talk we will explore some of the rich mathematics that has been developed and applied to rating and ranking problems. In the process we’ll uncover a surprising connection between two of the best-known and widely used methodologies. For more information, http://web.sonoma.edu/math/