Thomas Peron

Eduardo Alves Baratela, Felipe Jordão Xavier, Thomas Peron et al.

Soccer attracts the attention of many researchers and professionals in the sports industry. Therefore, the incorporation of science into the sport is constantly growing, with increasing investments in performance analysis and sports prediction industries. This study aims to (i) highlight the use of complex networks as an alternative tool for predicting soccer match outcomes, and (ii) show how the combination of structural analysis of passing networks with match statistical data can provide deeper insights into the game patterns and strategies used by teams. In order to do so, complex network metrics and match statistics were used to build machine learning models that predict the wins and losses of soccer teams in different leagues. The results showed that models based on passing networks were as effective as ``traditional'' models, which use general match statistics. Another finding was that by combining both approaches, more accurate models were obtained than when they were used separately, demonstrating that the fusion of such approaches can offer a deeper understanding of game patterns, allowing the comprehension of tactics employed by teams relationships between players, their positions, and interactions during matches. It is worth mentioning that both network metrics and match statistics were important and impactful for the mixed model. Furthermore, the use of networks with a lower granularity of temporal evolution (such as creating a network for each half of the match) performed better than a single network for the entire game.

Thomas Peron, Francisco A. Rodrigues, Luciano da F. Costa

Since the landmarks established by the Cremonese school in the 16th century, the history of violin design has been marked by experimentation. While great effort has been invested since the early 19th century by the scientific community on researching violin acoustics, substantially less attention has been given to the statistical characterization of how the violin shape evolved over time. In this paper we study the morphology of violins retrieved from the Musical Instrument Museums Online (MIMO) database -- the largest freely accessible platform providing information about instruments held in public museums. From the violin images, we derive a set of measurements that reflect relevant geometrical features of the instruments. The application of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) uncovered similarities between violin makers and their respective copyists, as well as among luthiers belonging to the same family lineage, in the context of historical narrative. Combined with a time-windowed approach, thin plate splines visualizations revealed that the average violin outline has remained mostly stable over time, not adhering to any particular trends of design across different periods in music history.

Cesar H. Comin, Thomas K. DM. Peron, Filipi N. Silva et al.

The increasing interest in complex networks research has been a consequence of several intrinsic features of this area, such as the generality of the approach to represent and model virtually any discrete system, and the incorporation of concepts and methods deriving from many areas, from statistical physics to sociology, which are often used in an independent way. Yet, for this same reason, it would be desirable to integrate these various aspects into a more coherent and organic framework, which would imply in several benefits normally allowed by the systematization in science, including the identification of new types of problems and the cross-fertilization between fields. More specifically, the identification of the main areas to which the concepts frequently used in complex networks can be applied paves the way to adopting and applying a larger set of concepts and methods deriving from those respective areas. Among the several areas that have been used in complex networks research, pattern recognition, optimization, linear algebra, and time series analysis seem to play a more basic and recurrent role. In the present manuscript, we propose a systematic way to integrate the concepts from these diverse areas regarding complex networks research. In order to do so, we start by grouping the multidisciplinary concepts into three main groups, namely features, similarity, and network connectivity. Then we show that several of the analysis and modeling approaches to complex networks can be thought as a composition of maps between these three groups, with emphasis on nine main types of mappings, which are presented and illustrated. Such a systematization of principles and approaches also provides an opportunity to review some of the most closely related works in the literature, which is also developed in this article.