Free-for-all

Free-for-all sports are typically measured in time (or points or distance) and the time or points an athlete (or team) earns during an event may be relatively unaffected by time or points another athlete earns. Ultimately the ranking of athletes is according to the time in the event.

Some examples of these types of sports include

• cross-country running
• decathlon
• long jump
• yacht racing

Most of the time, we will have the actual time earned for each individual athlete. Thus, we can model this time at different events to determine the relative ability of athletes. When modeling time, we can utilize regression models.

Some of the time, we will only have a ranking (or ordering) of the athletes at an event. An example of ranking-only data is drafting athletes where you only know the first draft pick, the second draft pick, and so on. Alternatively, even if we could record time, perhaps the time was not reported and thus we only have a ranking. Alternative models will need to be used in this situation.