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From: israel@umcp-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sport.football
Subject: Re: Mathematical ranking methods
Message-ID: <3685@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Nov-83 22:00:52 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.3685
Posted: Tue Nov  8 22:00:52 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Nov-83 11:45:12 EST
References: <3633@umcp-cs.UUCP> <693@hao.UUCP>
Organization: Univ. of Maryland, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 28


	  Any attempt to rank teams is always going to conflict with
	some other method of ranking them.

So what?  Does the existence of the AP poll stop the UPI poll from
existing?  Do both stop the net poll?

Why I'm interested in doing such a thing is to see if we can come up
with a method of ranking that does a fairly good job of predicting.
I think that a problem with the polls is that they change too often.
If Grenada State U. is ranked 12th, and they play Nebraska and lose,
They could drop down to 18th or 20th, or even out of the polls.  If
they were considered better than eight other teams in the top twenty
before the game, and were also predicted to lose to Nebraska, why
does losing change people's opinions of them so that they are now
considered worse than those other teams?

I think that the sign of a good system for ranking is that it tends
to approach an equilibrium state where most results are in accordance
with the ranking system, and it tends to change less and less as
it gets more data (read: later in the season).

-- 

^-^ Bruce ^-^

University of Maryland, Computer Science
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