A Real-World Markov Chain arising in Recreational Volleyball

David J. Aldous; Madelyn Cruz

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arXiv · 2106.09142

A Real-World Markov Chain arising in Recreational Volleyball

David J. Aldous·Madelyn Cruz

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Abstract

Card shuffling models have provided simple motivating examples for the mathematical theory of mixing times for Markov chains. As a complement, we introduce a more intricate realistic model of a certain observable real-world scheme for mixing human players onto teams. We quantify numerically the effectiveness of this mixing scheme over the 7 or 8 steps performed in practice. We give a combinatorial proof of the non-trivial fact that the chain is indeed irreducible.

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David J. Aldous, Madelyn Cruz. 2021-06-16. A Real-World Markov Chain arising in Recreational Volleyball. https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.09142

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