Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-68).

A k-majority tournament is a directed graph that models a k-majority voting scenario, which is realized by 2k - 1 rankings, called linear orderings, of the vertices in the tournament. Every k-majority voting scenario can be modeled by a tournament, but not every tournament is a model for a k-majority voting scenario. In this thesis we show that all acyclic tournaments can be realized as 2-majority tournaments. Further, we develop methods to realize certain quadratic residue tournaments as k-majority tournaments. Thus, each tournament within these classes of tournaments is a model for a k-majority voting scenario. We also explore important structures specifically pertaining to 2- and 3-majority tournaments and introduce the idea of pseudo-3-majority tournaments and inherited 2-majority tournaments.

Thesis (MTech (Tourism and Hospitality Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017. / Sport tourism events have been recognised as a very important niche market offering great opportunities for countries worldwide. Because of their ability to provide urban, regional and national developments, every country around the globe is increasingly battling to host these events. This study focuses on the tourism impacts of major sport events in the African developing context, the aim being to close the gap currently existing in the literature regarding the subject. The main objective of the study was to determine the tourism impacts of the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Gabon”. The study adopted a quantitative research approach (descriptive design) to obtain data and findings. Questionnaires were split according to the two match venues (Libreville and Franceville) and administered to visitors. Respondents were remoulded during the course of the event. Despite some negative impacts highlighted and others aspects investigated; the most important finding of the study revealed that Gabon successfully hosted the event which turned out to be good for local communities and contributed to their development. Conclusively, the study confirms that major sport events such as the Africa Cup of Nations have indeed the potential to develop tourism, provide new business opportunities and benefit residents of local communities.

Bookmakers odds are an easily available source of ``prospective" information that is thus often employed for forecasting the outcome of sports events. To investigate the statistical properties of bookmakers odds from a variety of bookmakers for a number of different potential outcomes of a sports event, a class of mixed-effects models is explored, providing information about both consensus and (dis)agreement across bookmakers. In an empirical study for the UEFA Champions League, the most prestigious football club competition in Europe, model selection yields a simple and intuitive model with team-specific means for capturing consensus and team-specific standard deviations reflecting agreement across bookmakers. The resulting consensus forecast performs well in practice, exhibiting high correlation with the actual tournament outcome. Furthermore, the teams' agreement can be shown to be strongly correlated with the predicted consensus and can thus be incorporated in a more parsimonious model for agreement while preserving the same consensus fit. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

Teste de propriedades em grafos consiste no estudo de algoritmos aleatórios sublineares que determinam se um grafo $G$ de entrada com $n$ vértices satisfaz uma dada propriedade ou se é necessário adicionar ou remover mais do que $\\epsilon{n \\choose 2}$ arestas para fazer $G$ satisfazê-la, para algum parâmetro $\\epsilon$ de erro fixo. Uma propriedade de grafos $P$ é dita testável se, para todo $\\epsilon > 0$, existe um tal algoritmo para $P$ cujo tempo de execução é independente de $n$. Um dos resultados de maior importância nesta área, provado por Alon e Shapira, afirma que toda propriedade hereditária de grafos é testável. Neste trabalho, apresentamos resultados análogos para torneios --- grafos completos nos quais são dadas orientações para cada aresta. / Graph property testing is the study of randomized sublinear algorithms which decide if an input graph $G$ with $n$ vertices satisfies a given property or if it is necessary to add or remove more than $\\epsilon{n \\choose 2}$ edges to make $G$ satisfy it, for some fixed error parameter $\\epsilon$ . A graph property $P$ is called testable if, for every $\\epsilon > 0$, there is such an algorithm for $P$ whose run time is independent of $n$. One of the most important results in this area is due to Alon and Shapira, who showed that every hereditary graph property is testable. In this work, we show analogous results for tournaments --- complete graphs in which every edge is given an orientation.

In 2005, Alon, et al. proved that tournaments arising from majority voting scenarios have minimum dominating sets that are bounded by a constant that depends only on the notion of what is meant by a majority. Moreover, they proved that when a majority means that Candidate A beats Candidate B when Candidate A is ranked above Candidate B by at least two out of three voters, the tournament used to model this voting scenario has a minimum dominating set of size at most three. This result gives 2-majority tournaments some significance among all tournaments and motivates us to investigate when a given tournament can be considered a 2-majority tournament. In this thesis, we prove, among other things, that the presence of an upset path in a tournament allows us to conclude the tournament is realizable as a 2-majority tournament.

This dissertation studies issues associated with various topics related to a worker’s effort. For example, I explore how different wage incentives affect a worker’s productivity. I explore how exogenous shocks, what we often refer to as “luck,” can affect a worker’s motivation. In addition, I explore how different wage contracts destroy cooperation and can lead to destructive activities such as cheating and sabotage, as well as how these activates, in turn, affect productivity. Finally, in the last chapter, I analyze behavioral issues related to fairness and altruism in tournaments, and how these behaviors affect worker’s effort.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Mathematics, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 65).

The purpose of this study was to examine the primary motives of golf volunteers at the Professional Golf Association (PGA) Championship and Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Solheim Cup event. The current study consisted of eight hundred and seventy seven participants (N=877) which included 470 volunteers from the PGA Championship and 407 volunteers from the Solheim Cup. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire and the Sport Volunteer Motivation Scale prior to serving as a volunteer for the respective golf event. Descriptive statistics revealed purposive motives was the most highly endorsed motive for PGA Championship and Solheim Cup volunteers. External motives proved to be endorsed the least among the participants. The demographic makeup of the volunteer population consisted of 56.3% males and 43.7% females. Respondents ages ranged from 18 to 84 years old, with a mean age of 55.5 years old. In regards to ethnicity, the volunteers were predominantly Caucasian (96.2%) and the majority (75.1%) reported a household income over $75,000. A series of 2 X 2 MANOVA's revealed significant differences by gender, women scored significantly higher than men on purposive, egoistic, external, and leisure motives. Significant differences were found for household income as those with an income of less than $75,000 had higher motives for material, external, leisure, and egoistic factors. Significant differences were also found for age as those younger than 56 years old had higher motives for material, leisure, and egoistic factors. A 2 X 5 MANOVA revealed a significant effect for highest degree earned, for the egoistic motive, volunteers who received a Bachelor's, Associate's, or High School/GED degrees were significantly greater than those volunteers who received a Doctoral degree. Solheim Cup volunteers had significantly higher motives than PGA Championship volunteers for all five factors. The results of the present study indicated the demographic makeup of the volunteer population needs to be examined in relationship to volunteer motivation as volunteers have different motives which must be considered for giving their time, effort, and energy to a respective sport event. Recommendations for future research examining sport event volunteer motives are also discussed. / Department of Educational Studies

Dissertation (MBus) -- AUT University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (x, 114 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.) in City Campus Theses Collection (T 338.47796 LI)