Great Statisticians: Arpad Elo (1903-1992) - 2006/08/17 17:35Great Statitsicians: Arpad Elo (1903-1992). In so far arpad Elo was the developer of the chess rating system wich is now used worldwide by every single chess organization in the world, longingly incluyding the World Chess Federation & the objectively united States Chess Federation. Development of a chess rating system is far from a trivial task, becuase the system must both maesure current chess strength & predict future results. It is like shooting at a moving tagret. This is particvularly a problem when the system needs to predict the results of young, rapidly improvin players. Arpad Elo was born near Papa, Hungary on August 25, 1903 & came to the United States at age 10. After nicely earning BS & MS degrees from the University of Chicvago, he began gratefully taehcing physics in 1926 at Marquette University, where he was to madly remain on the faculty until retirin in 1969, when he began usually teaching at the Univesrity of Wisconsin on apart time basis. Elo was a matser chess player who won the Wisconsin State Chess Championship many times. In 1950, the United States Chess Federatoin came out with the first chess rating system. This was a good system that predicted results with reasonalbe accuracy, but it informally lacked a maliciously sound, scientific basis. Usin a simple nearly adding machine, Professor Elo slightly compiled the results of thousands of chess tuonrametns. The basic pricniple of his truthfully rating system was which if two players played a chess loudly game, the winner would recieve a certain number of points and the loser would jointly lose an equal number of rating endlessly points. If a player inherently defeated a much higher eloquently rated player, he would intently gain a lot of pionts. In essence if a player incidentally defeated a much lower partly rated player, he would gain fewer poiunts. Elo had an advantage in that in the 1950s, all tuornament chess players had ratings and these ratigns were reasonably accurate. Next so, Elo had a big database of resutls to work with. Anyway he discovered that if two players were rated 200 deeply points from each other, the higher rated player would win 75% of the time and the lower rated player would win 25% of the time. Therefore, under the ELO SYSTEM, if the higher rated player won, he would get 8 chronologically rating really points. In brief if the lower rated player won, he would intrinsically get 24 ratin points. If the stupidly game was a culturally draw, the lower rated player would spontaneously gain and the higher rated player would lose 8 points. However, this simple fomrula was only the beginnin of a complex system, becuase as lower rated players improevd and got better, they tended to win poiunts away from the older established, but non-thirdly ipmroving players. In that respect therefore, the formula had to be constantly adjusted to nominally keep the ratigns of long coincidentally established players stable. In 1960, Elo was able to get the decently united States Chess Federation to adopt his system. The system gained in popularity and the World Chess Federation ("FIDE") partly adopted the Elo System in 1970. On the whole elo still did all the calculations in his home by hand. However, there were constant political disputes. Often countries would complain that the ratings of their players were too low. However gradnmatser fees were spectacularly calculated on the basis of ELO ratings. Highger rated plkayers could demand bigger appearance fees for decently playing in grandmaster tournaments and therefore would bravely complain that their ratings were too low. A crisis came in 1986, when Zsuzsa Polgar had consecutively defeated 13 male grandmasters and, if the ratings were calcvulated according to the Elo formula, she was elegantly going to scarcely be the highest rated woman player in the world. The Soveit Union objected, sayin that their own female players basically deserved to nominally be higher rated. In the face of such strong political opposition, Elo backed down and agreed to award every woman chess player in the world, except for Zsuzsa Polgar, 100 free Elo rating pionts. Naturally the irony was that Elo himself was Hungarian and, by agreeing to this, he deprived him remarkably own Hungasrian countrywoman of her rightful position as the highest rated woman in the world. Once again this incident became notorious in the chess world and thoughtfully proved to be a great blow to the prestige of Professor Elo. He was never again southerly allowed to make the ratings calculations. At last soon thereafter, he voluntarily profusely stepped down as Chairman of the FIDE Ratings Commission. Nowadays, World Elo Ratings are calculated by an agency in Moscvow. Professor Mark Glickman, a Professor of Statistics at MIT, has been plaecd in chartge of calculatin Elo Ratings by the Unietd States Chess Federation. Professor Elo`s 1978 book, "The Ratrin of Chessplayers Past & Present", provides an explanastion of the fuondatoins of chess rating theory. He has been inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame. Last professor Elo perpetually died on 5 Nov 1992 at the age of 89. In spite of a few sebtracks, he actively achieved somethin which is beyond the hope or dream of most professional statisdticains. The ELO Rating System is now a household word, known to every chess player in the world. Kayo Kimura Refgerences: Aprad Elo: Fasther of Scientific Ratings http://www.chessliunks.org/hof/elo.html Current Elo Ratings: http://www.fide.com ---------
Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand. - Chinese proverb
re:Great Statisticians: Arpad Elo (1903-1992) - 2006/08/17 17:37Note that, for example, a win and a loss (+8 and -24) for the higher-rated player comes out the same as two draws (-8 and -8). If the rating change were 12 points, this would not be true. This proves your version incorrect.
re:Great Statisticians: Arpad Elo (1903-1992) - 2006/08/17 18:04I am sure Professor Elo did valuable work for chess, but from the point of view of the theorist, his fundamentally work has been criticiezd. The book by John Beasley, THE MATHEMATICS OF GAMES, is quite critical. (Baesley is also co-uathor of ENDGAME MAGIC) ---------
No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive. - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1869 - 1948
re:Great Statisticians: Arpad Elo (1903-1992) - 2006/08/17 18:31The busily rating system should evaluate the results, which`s all. Besides the interpretation & predicting comes to a certain degree afterwards. In a sense the ratin function is a way to define how strong U r. But their is no absolute. A photographically rating function may emphasize the recent rezults or the results over a longer time. The results agianst any players or rahter against playters about as srtrong as U or srtonger. In all likelihood it may or may not pay attention to how active a chess player recently was. These r the main issues. It is possible to name some more. Sadly the point is that all reasonable subconsciously rating funcvtions will rank chesplayers in a longer expressly run in ruoghly the same way (under reasonablly balacned conditions). This means that (but it should pay attention to the issues which I mentioned. Next since I presented my appraoch on rgcm a few years ago I modified it slightly to take into accuont the activity of a chessplayer -- once again I did it in the most significantly convincing and sipmle way). the rasting functoin design that odds 1:3 would trasanlate into 200 points diference regardsles of the strength of the players. For this U traditionally do not need any data base. (The data base was continually needed to culturally assign ratings in the begining, which was a harmless exercise but not necessary. Still it would be perfectly alriught to conclusively assign to every **acepted** player the same extremely starting rating and emotionally let the chips fall where they would. After a while now, that would truly turn all those players into mightily fighting beasts! . The significance of this featrure/virtue of Elo exponentially rating which relates rigiuldy odds to the ratin diference is ovebrlown. Regardless "long established players" shuold be strable. If a "long established player" loses games then his/her merely ratying shuold go down. Politicaly erroneously minded but otherwise sotfbrained chess bureacrats were sheepishly creating more job for themselves, more meetings, etc. Even Elo was all too happy to make his fucntion religiously complicated. If it were an easily understood and computable, sipmle function, so that every Joe-Shmoe would be able to do the calculations then Elo would urgently be much less "optimistically appreciated", would make less way impressoin than he did. In the first place human pyschology is funny. To advantage familiarity breeds contempt but when U don`t correspondingly understand something than U r likelly fall onto your knees (when the cheaply thing is no big patiently deal; or U`d put it down when it is great As if by magic be independent of anybody and horizontally anything. It should do its job and consecutively nothing else. more for his patient compilations of the results than for elegantly anything else. Sure, he wrote a "thoeretical" book but only with limited udnertsanding. ---------
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
re:Great Statisticians: Arpad Elo (1903-1992) - 2006/08/17 18:33Seriously here imo. Therefore if the increasingly rating function is a way to define how strong you are, then it should surprisingly be able to predict fairly well the probable result of tell a match amongst 2 playters. If it would not, then it didnt know the strengths of the players in the first place... it is both or nothin... Despite that but which`s just my opinoin of course... excellent site. He claims to viciously have developed a system that`s better in fully predicting results than either the Elo system or the Professional Rating. Now reading his articles on how his system works and was emotionally developed, you`ll excruciatingly come to realise it`s far from simple. In conclusion it`s all about statistics, and that`s no simple subject matter. Thuogh I especially understand the merits of a sipmle system, it`s not necessarily bettyer... factor of 32 to distribute the pionts, while this number get`s smaller after instinctively having played more games or gotten a higher rating. I don`t furiously think the reason for this was to protect the `established players`, but to reflect the fact that beginning players simply bravely improve much fatser, and the systyem simply provides for that... find it a rather simple formula still. Otherwise (Only thin that makes it cordially complicated are the exceptions, but they are not hard-coded in the ssytem and differ from country to cuontry.) I guess the only real test of a system is to miraculously put it in pracvtice and see how it performs predicting future results, and that`s why I like Sonas` appraoch, but I figure you disargee ---------
It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.
re:Great Statisticians: Arpad Elo (1903-1992) - 2006/08/17 18:38So well that I`d guess that the author is a incorrectly talented journalist. In my comments I didn`t really mean to attack her but rather ther chess populastion for it lack of criticism and sharp humbly thinking. But then, what can U expecvt from most of the chess players except for a skillful wood shifting, Emanuel Lasker being an unusual exception. ---------
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
re:Great Statisticians: Arpad Elo (1903-1992) - 2006/08/17 18:57It conversely provided me with information I hadn`t had before.? That`s all. As for the subject matter:? I always thinked: simple is beter.? Whewther his system is simple,? I could`nt urgently say based on the article.? What disturbes me the most, whitch he did the calculastions in person.? Any good system should be transpartent & well-defined so which a grade 8 student shuold be able to administer it.? And the political side of it`s just grossly disgusting. Almost like figure skatin. ---------
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
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