That question about chess rankings reminds me of a book published in 2006 that mentions how meaningless these single-number ratings are: Does Measurement Measure Up?: How Numbers Reveal and Conceal the Truth by John M. Henshaw There is an excellent review in Nature, 27 July 2006, page 357. I quote: When you try to reduce separate measurements to a single number, you can get any number you want by adjusting the weights. In evaluating universities, why give 25% weight to peer assessment and 10% to expenditure per student, etc.? Changing the weights would produce different rankings... Neil On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 8:23 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
I found this (somewhat old) picture of the distribution of chess ratings:
http://zwim.free.fr/ics/rating_distribution.gif
It isn't exactly Gaussian, but it seems to have Gaussian qualities.
1. Has anyone done research on the distribution of chess ratings?
2. What is the _interpretation_ of chess ratings? I.e., if A has chess rating Ar and B has chess rating Br, what is the probability that A beats B?
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-- Dear Friends, I have now retired from AT&T. New coordinates: Neil J. A. Sloane, President, OEIS Foundation 11 South Adelaide Avenue, Highland Park, NJ 08904, USA. Also Visiting Scientist, Math. Dept., Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ. Phone: 732 828 6098; home page: http://NeilSloane.com Email: njasloane@gmail.com