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Young Researchers’ Meeting

The Young Researchers' meeting (YRM) is a weekly seminar for postgraduate students and postdocs. It provides an informal forum where we discuss our research and exchange ideas.

Everyone is welcome to attend. Unless otherwise stated, meetings take place every Thursday at 5pm in the Statistics Common Room (MSB) during term time. The organisers for the 2024–25 academic year are Leonardo BaggianiLink opens in a new window and Pablo Ramses Alonso MartinLink opens in a new window. If you are interested in giving a talk get in touch with us.

3nd October, 5pm

Common Room

Presentations from current PhD students.

10th October, 5pm

Common Room

Presentations from new first year PhD students.

17th October, 5pm

Common Room

Presentations from new first year PhD students.

24th October, 5pm

Common Room

Francesca Basini

Title: Assessing competitive balance in the English Premier League for over forty seasons using a stochastic block model and some “behind the scenes”.

Abstract: In this talk, I am going to tell you how I ended up publishing a paper about football and why Tottenham Hotspur is my favourite team!
The main focus and motivation for this paper is to assess the issue of competitive balance in the context of the English First Division / Premier League over more than 40 seasons. We develop a Bayesian statistical network model based on an extension of the stochastic block model to measure the balance between teams in a league. We represent the outcome of all matches in a football season as a dense network with nodes identified by teams and categorical edges representing the outcome of each game as a win, draw, or a loss. We then infer the network block structure, that is the number of blocks in which the nodes are partitioned and their membership to a block, via efficient MCMC implementation of the allocation sampler.
Our analysis provides evidence suggesting a structural change around the early 2000s from a reasonably balanced league to a two-tier league.

31st October, 4:30pm

Common Room

Speaker: Alexander Kent

Title: TBC

Abstract: TBC

7th November, 5pm

Common Room

Speaker: Kieran Drury

Title: TBC

Abstract: TBC

14th November, 5pm

Common Room

Speaker: Alberto Bordino

Title: TBC

Abstract: TBC

21st November, 5pm

Common Room

Speaker: David Huk

Title: TBC

Abstract: TBC

28th November, 4:30pm

Common Room

Speaker: Andreea Popescu

Title: TBC

Abstract: TBC

5th December, 5pm

Common Room

Speaker: Leonardo Baggiani

Title: TBC

Abstract: TBC

About Football Social

As part of the social activities within the Statistics Department, Football Social sessions take place every Tuesday at 5pm in Term 1, organised by Gregor SteinerLink opens in a new window.

Anyone among PhD students, PostDocs and staff from the Statistics Department is welcome to participate, no prior experience needed. If you wish to get involved, please contact Gregor.