@inproceedings{2931243,
    title = "Skills Importance across Ages for Men’s Volleyball",
    author = "Sotirios, Drikos and Ioannis, Ntzoufras",
    year = "2015",
    pages = "24-31",
    publisher = "University of Loughborough",
    booktitle = "5th International Conference on Mathematics in Sport",
    keywords = "Volleyball, bayesian analysis, skills",
    abstract = "Volleyball is a competitive team sport whose main objective is to score the most points
by grounding the ball to the opponents side of the court. The numbers of points a team
scores is primarily based on the execution of the skills of the game. Due to the hierarchical
structure of the game events follow stable patterns: serve outcome, pass–set–attack (complex
1) outcome, Serve–block–dig–set– counter attack (complex 2) outcome. The outcome
consists of four possibilities: To win or to lose a point, continuation of the action with the
ball on the team’s side or with the ball on the opponent’s side. In this paper we provide a
method to calculate the importance of every skill on the outcome of the Volleyball game for
youth, juniors and men teams. We base our analysis on Fellingham’s model for importance
scores. We use data from the performance analysis of the winning team from the most
recent world championships in all ages for male volleyball. In order to arrive at posterior
distributions, we use a Markov chain transition matrix. To estimate the Markovian transition
matrix, we assume a multinomial likelihood with a Dirichlet prior on the transition
probabilities. The prior distribution of skills is formed by expert coaches’ opinion. Our
main purpose is to examine if key skills are consistent across ages in male volleyball."
}