Should a football team run or pass? A game theory and linear programming approach

Last week I visited Oberlin College to deliver the Fuzzy Vance Lecture in Mathematics (see post here). In addition, I gave two lectures to Bob Bosch’s undergraduate optimization course. My post about my lecture on ambulance location models is here.

My second lecture was about how to solve two player zero-sum games using linear programming. The application was a sports analytics application of whether a football team should run or pass. The purpose of the lecture was to learn about zero-sum games (it was a new topic to most students) and learn how to solve zero-sum games with two decision-makers using linear programming.

This lecture tied into my Badger Bracketology work, but since I do not use optimization in my college football playoff forecasting model, I selected another football application.

 

Related reading:


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