How much does winning ACM depend on practice?
We assume that p, the probability that a given team will win a given contest, is related to n, the number of practice problems solved by the team prior to the contest. This relationship is modelled by the logistic formula
log(p/(1-p)) = a + bn ,
for some a and b. Your job is to find a and b such that the formula most accurately reflects a set of observed results.
Each observation consists of n and w. n is the number of practice problems solved by some team prior to a contest, and w is 1 if the team wins the contest, 0 if it does not.
Given a, b, and n the formula above may be used to compute p, the estimated probability that w = 1. The likelihood of a particular observation is p if w = 1 and 1-p if w = 0; The likelihood of a set of observations is the product of the likelihoods of the individual observations.
You are to compute the maximum likelihood estimate for a and b. That is, the values of a and b for which the likelihood of a given set of observations is maximized.