A taxonomy of sports rating systems

Systems analysis is applied to a milieu of sports rating systems (SRSs) resulting in a unifying taxonomy. Each SRS operates in three phases: evaluation of sports performance, weighting of the evaluated performance and creation of a rating for each competitor using the weighted evaluated performance. In the first phase, sports are classified as: combat sports where each competitor tries to control the opponent, object sports where each competitor tries to control an object in direct competition with the opponent and independent sports where each competitor is unimpeded by the opponent. Each sports performance is evaluated by judging, measuring and/or scoring. In the second phase, weighting may be represented by matrix operations. In the third phase, there are two combinations of operations that classify SRSs: accumulative and adjustive approaches. Examples of SRSs are presented for boxing, track and field, golf, skiing, Olympic performances, chess, soccer, tennis, and those with the ability to predict future outcomes.