Evaluating individual player contribution in a team sport

Abstract

Disclosed are computational features in a system for the evaluation of players and non-player factors in a team game. Evaluating the contributions of individual game factors toward a plurality of team game event results is provided with the method including the steps of identifying a plurality of team game events that each has at least one quantifiable team game event result; identifying a plurality of factor categories relevant to each of the team game events, wherein the plurality of factor categories may each take at least one of a plurality of pre-defined category-specific factor states, at least one of the category-specific factor states being defined by the participation of the individual factor in the event results, where the number of identified team game events exceeds the total number of the category-specific factor states among all the factor categories; calculating a best-fit solution to a system of equations using the category-specific factor states among all factor categories as independent variables and the quantifiable event results as dependent variables, the solution assigning a contribution value to at least one of the category-specific factor states, each of the contribution values representing an estimation of the contribution of the corresponding category-specific factor state toward each of the event results having the category-specific factor state present during the event.