Computer program to decide football fixtures
August 17, 2009
A professor at the University of Nottingham’s School of Computer Science, believes that he has developed a computer program that can solve the problems of timetabling English football matches.
The software, developed by Professor Graham Kendall is specially designed to deal with football fixtures over Christmas and the New Year. “The biggest difficulties occur at Christmas and New Year when the top clubs play at least twice over the holiday period. As well as coordinating 92 teams and 46 fixtures I have captured many other real world problems such as avoiding local derbies, ensuring that teams do not play each other twice over the Christmas period, and trying to limit the travel that has to be undertaken by the supporters.”
The program takes into account some very specific guidelines laid down by the football authorities. It is able to take into account logistics such as travel for supporters and the problems of policing football matches and compute the data to come up with the best logistical scenarios. For example, it will make sure that two teams from the same area like Fulham and Chelsea or Manchester City and Manchester United are not both playing home matches on the same day. It can also make sure that over Boxing Day and New Year’s Day every team will play at least one game at home and one away.
Professor Kendall is discussing his results with the football authorities and hopes that if he is successful he could use the program to work out the fixtures for the whole football season.
Thanks to www.media-newswire.com for the above quotes, for more information on this article please visit their website.
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