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PageRank applied to Soccer Teams

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/535861/pagerank-algorithm-reveals-worlds-all-time-top-soccer-team/

The PageRank algorithm we learned in class is employed by Google to determine which websites have the highest importance and thus should be featured closer to the top of Google search results. Google determines the importance by counting the links to a website and taking into account the importance of the of the sites these links are coming from. This determines the importance of original website and through process of iterations the algorithm comes up with a ranking. This should all sound familiar since we went over the PageRank algorithm in class and even used it in a problem set. What is interesting about the article I have attached is that they use the PageRank algorithm to determine the worlds all time top soccer team.

The article starts off talking about Google’s founders developing the algorithm in the 1990s and goes on to discuss examples of other using of the algorithm outside of Google (used to rank scientific papers or in an election where everyone can vote for everyone else). Specifically it discusses how two students at the Methodius University Of Macedonia used the PageRank algorithm to determine the top soccer team of all time. They utilized all the results from every world cup from 1930 until the present day to determine each team’s importance. This data includes over 7000 games and 210 countries. They establish a link between two teams that have played each other (represented by nodes) in which the polarity and weight of the link are based on who won. They then iteratively apply the PageRank algorithm over a number of iterations. The final PageRankings determine that Brazil is the worlds all time top soccer team. This intuitively makes sense since the team has won the tournament a record of five times. If we look at the stats, we see the Brazil has also played more games, won more games, and scored more goals than any other team, so once again their title as all time top soccer team rings true.

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