Publications
Academic and technical work, in full.
Bachelor’s thesis · Palacký University Olomouc · 2026
Does Home-Field Advantage Really Matter?
An analysis of NFL team performance in the regular season, 2015–2024
Supervisor: PhDr. Daniel Dostál, Ph.D. — Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology.
This study examines the influence of selected environmental factors on home-field advantage in the National Football League across the 2015 to 2024 regular seasons. Four hypotheses — on time zone travel, circadian asymmetry, stadium type, and weather conditions — are tested on a sample of 2,623 games. The analytical framework is a linear regression model with a paired-comparison parameterisation, where each team carries a single strength parameter per season.
The only statistically significant factor is the visiting team crossing three time zones, which increases home-field advantage by roughly two points. The effect emerges only in coast-to-coast games and is not absorbed by the pre-game point spread — suggesting the betting market does not price it in. The hypotheses on circadian asymmetry, domed stadiums, and weather were not supported.
Keywords: home-field advantage, NFL, time zones, travel fatigue, sports analytics.
Independent study · Simulation · 2026
Aircraft Boarding: When the Fastest Method Changes
A Monte Carlo comparison of eleven boarding strategies across three operating scenarios
Aircraft boarding is a moving congestion problem inside one of the narrowest spaces in routine transport operations. Walking speed, luggage stowage, seat interference, boarding order, non-compliance, travel groups and door configuration all interact to determine total boarding time. The final experiment comprised 66,000 simulation runs — eleven boarding policies across three operating scenarios, with 2,000 Monte Carlo trials each.
Seven optimisation-oriented methods (CRBF, Steffen, Steffen-Lug, an adapted Reverse Pyramid, WilMA, Random and Back-to-Front) are compared against four simplified airline-like structures. The central finding is not that a single strategy wins: the optimal strategy changes when the operating environment changes. CRBF is fastest with a single door and under operational stress, while Steffen-Lug takes over once a second door opens — which also means statistical significance and operational significance are not the same thing.
Keywords: aircraft boarding, discrete-event simulation, Monte Carlo, queueing, operations research.