The Elo rating system is derived from a simple model where each player's performance is normally distributed around some per-player score with some common-to-all-players standard deviation. Things are scaled so that a 200-point rating different corresponds to an 0.75 expected score -- that is, the stronger player's p_win + 1/2 p_draw = 0.75. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system I don't know anything about the distribution of ratings themselves. --Michael 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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