Simple is the Reason of My Heart

Firing of BPL Football Managers and Maximal Efficiency

Till today, since the beginning of the Barclays Premiere League, eight out of twenty football managers are already replaced. Sometime back, together with two economists (Toke Aidt and Daniel Sgroi) and another fellow physicist in Cambridge (Bill Saslaw), we co-wrote a research paper entitled "Power Laws, Maximal Efficiency and the Turnover of Sports Managers" (which was published in Physica A and got some press attention in the UK after the World Cup 2006). Yes, I have done the "freaknomics" type research by looking at the phenomena of sports managers being fired for all sorts of reasons. It was the research that I have done on the football clubs that eventually led me to watching the Premiere League football till today. It was one of the most enjoyable and multi-disciplinary research collaborations for me. In this short blog entry, I will explain the research work with a "freaknomics" tradition and explain why the current firings will continue to happen because of  market efficiency in the Premiere League.   

The Birthday Problem

Three days ago, I discovered that one of my colleagues from Singapore Angle shares the same birthday with me. It reminded me of this interesting first year Cambridge undergraduate mathematical problem: What is the least number of persons required if the probability exceeds 1/2 that two or more persons have the same birthday (excluding the year)? So, I will offer the solution to the birthday problem (on my birthday, of course) and examine some interesting implications about the solution to this problem. Of course, if you want to read more about fun mathematical teasers which I have collected over the years, you can check out the actual document from this URL (note the document is in postscript format).