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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!woods
From: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: net.sport.football
Subject: Re: Mathematical ranking methods
Message-ID: <693@hao.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Nov-83 01:17:26 EST
Article-I.D.: hao.693
Posted: Mon Nov 14 01:17:26 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Nov-83 06:21:04 EST
References: <3633@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 15


  Any attempt to rank teams is always going to conflict with some other method
of ranking them. We've seen the subjective methods fail to agree, with the UPI
and AP polls rarely agreeing on all teams (and certainly not with the USENET
poll either :-), and even one dramatic case where two simpler, more objective
ranking methods failed to work, during the year of the baseball strike when
the Reds had the best record in baseball over the course of the whole season
and didn't even make the playoffs. Try to use a complicated mathematical ranking
method and sooner or later there will come a time when your method places some
2-5 team over a 4-3 team, say, and the controversey will continue on. 

			GREG
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