Ranking Movement Tracking

[David Aragon <daragon@gate.cybernex.net>]

I was curious about the promotions/demotions of Rikishi from one
tournament to another. I downloaded some data from Nathan's wonderful
Sumo page at:

http://www.hal.com/~nathan/Sumo/

and made a comparison chart for the 6 tournaments of 1996 and the 1997
Hatsu basho. It's an Excel 5.0 document and if anybody is interested
E-mail a request and I'll send it to you.I'm going to set up a Web page
one of these days.

Does anybody know if there is some kind of formula for figuring out how
much a Rikishi will rise or fall based on his record.

I noticed that with an 8-7 record he will rise 1 level, if his record is
9-7 he will fall one level. I have to look at the data some more and see
if I can find some kind of trend. In the meantime if someone has an idea
of how they determine upward and downward movement I would like to hear
about it.

For Example Konishiki's record

1996
Hatsu Haru Natsu Nagoya Aki Kyushu Hatsu 97
M8E    M9W  M14  M8W    M4E  M9E    M13E
7-8    6-9  10-5 8-7    4-11 6-9     8-7
       -1   -5   +6     +4   -5      -4

That's a lot of movement. Any thoughts?