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  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by rasputin View Post
    Highly biased by preseason rankings? Ohio State was unranked in the AP in the preseason. They are now 6-0, with wins over Cincinnati, Creighton, and 4 cupcakes. And that team is ranked number one?

    There must be a reason why the NCAA isn't releasing the details of this metric. Its performance looks even worse than RPI at this point.
    my thesis being that poor preseason rankings (or likely lack thereof) make most dork polls a bit of a crapshoot at this time of year.
    1200. DDMF.

  2. #22
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    Feb 2007
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    Washington, D.C.

    More

    Apparently margin of victory is capped at 10 points, which is ridiculous. And efficiency isn’t adjusted for the quality of the opponent.

    OTOH, Kentucky is ranked 61, so I can get behind that. The SeaofBlue folks are not happy.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by ncexnyc View Post
    I'll leave the poll watching to the many stats geeks on this forum. I'll stick with actually watching the games.
    "Better you than us." -- NCAA Tournament Selection Committee

    A lot of consternation on this board for a metric that does something awesome: leave UNC out of the top 20. Once they learn how to count, and run out of fingers and toes, the folks at Inside Carolina are going to be really upset.

    As I understand it, all metrics are meaningless this early in the season, which makes me wonder why the NCAA bothered to release numbers right now when they were under no obligation to do so. They should have waited until the new year, when most of the college football bowls are over, and most college basketball teams start conference play. That said, I appreciate all transparency, especially the kind that shows this level of organizational stupidity.

    Enjoy the process, everyone. I can't believe no one in his thread has mentioned the one team in America worth following: Houston Baptist. They beat Fordham and Wake Forest, and lost to Virginia and Wisconsin. This puts them at #147, which is in the top half of today's list of all 353 teams, just ahead of Final Four team Loyola Chicago (#148) and the following power conference teams: Washington State (#155), South Carolina (#162), Utah (#169), Boston College (#170), Baylor (#185), Wake Forest (#205), and California (#246).

  4. #24
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    Hot'Lanta... home of the Falcons!
    Quote Originally Posted by brevity View Post
    As I understand it, all metrics are meaningless this early in the season, which makes me wonder why the NCAA bothered to release numbers right now when they were under no obligation to do so. They should have waited until the new year, when most of the college football bowls are over, and most college basketball teams start conference play. That said, I appreciate all transparency, especially the kind that shows this level of organizational stupidity.
    Brevity is, as usual, right on the mark with the above line. Folks are getting worked up about the NET but it is too early to know if it works or is an abject failure. The NCAA smartly is not including any preseason bias/ranking in the NET. Once we hit 10-15 games played by all the teams, then I bet the NET will start to look a little more ordinary. But, at this point, it is actually kinda difficult to tell the difference between Kentucky, Liberty, Radford, Kent St, and Stoney Brook... I mean, they are all 5-1.

    That said, as I noted months ago when this sucker was first announced, capping the margin of victory at 10 points is a silly idea that will eliminate a lot of your analytical ability. I suspect that even once we have more data, there will be some head scratching results in the NET. I am hoping the NCAA Selection Committee will be able to see beyond some of the flaws, as they did when they were using RPI as a key measurement.

    -Jason "this is better than RPI... but it still isn't close to many other measuring sticks commonly used" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    Brevity is, as usual, right on the mark with the above line. Folks are getting worked up about the NET but it is too early to know if it works or is an abject failure. The NCAA smartly is not including any preseason bias/ranking in the NET. Once we hit 10-15 games played by all the teams, then I bet the NET will start to look a little more ordinary. But, at this point, it is actually kinda difficult to tell the difference between Kentucky, Liberty, Radford, Kent St, and Stoney Brook... I mean, they are all 5-1.

    That said, as I noted months ago when this sucker was first announced, capping the margin of victory at 10 points is a silly idea that will eliminate a lot of your analytical ability. I suspect that even once we have more data, there will be some head scratching results in the NET. I am hoping the NCAA Selection Committee will be able to see beyond some of the flaws, as they did when they were using RPI as a key measurement.

    -Jason "this is better than RPI... but it still isn't close to many other measuring sticks commonly used" Evans
    I agree with the above analysis in theory, but there are a few outliers that I'm not sure will be cured by time. I"m not really sure time is going to correctly sort Kentucky versus Radford, Liberty, etc, under this system...As others have mentioned, the cap at ten for margin is indeed silly...a case can be made for 20 or so, but a ten point game can be a close game with late free throws...which is not what Duke UK was.

    And while I have my differences with Nate Silver, his statistical work is very precise and elegant...and he's trashed this system since he found out how they're doing it. Time will tell...

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by brevity View Post
    "Better you than us." -- NCAA Tournament Selection Committee

    A lot of consternation on this board for a metric that does something awesome: leave UNC out of the top 20. Once they learn how to count, and run out of fingers and toes, the folks at Inside Carolina are going to be really upset.

    As I understand it, all metrics are meaningless this early in the season, which makes me wonder why the NCAA bothered to release numbers right now when they were under no obligation to do so. They should have waited until the new year, when most of the college football bowls are over, and most college basketball teams start conference play. That said, I appreciate all transparency, especially the kind that shows this level of organizational stupidity.

    Enjoy the process, everyone. I can't believe no one in his thread has mentioned the one team in America worth following: Houston Baptist. They beat Fordham and Wake Forest, and lost to Virginia and Wisconsin. This puts them at #147, which is in the top half of today's list of all 353 teams, just ahead of Final Four team Loyola Chicago (#148) and the following power conference teams: Washington State (#155), South Carolina (#162), Utah (#169), Boston College (#170), Baylor (#185), Wake Forest (#205), and California (#246).
    I don't remember UVA playing Houston Baptist. Did we win or are they a 16-seed?

  7. #27
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
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    New Bern, NC unless it's a home football game then I'm grilling on Devil's Alley
    In this poll, Kansas gets leapfrogged by EVERYBODY.
    Getting jumped over is getting to be habitual in Lawrence.
    Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."

  8. #28
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    Feb 2007
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    St. Louis
    Quote Originally Posted by CameronBornAndBred View Post
    In this poll, Kansas gets leapfrogged by EVERYBODY.
    Getting jumped over is getting to be habitual in Lawrence.
    Well, Lawrence is in the flyover zone.

  9. #29
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
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    Honolulu
    Quote Originally Posted by brevity View Post
    "Better you than us." -- NCAA Tournament Selection Committee

    A lot of consternation on this board for a metric that does something awesome: leave UNC out of the top 20. Once they learn how to count, and run out of fingers and toes, the folks at Inside Carolina are going to be really upset.

    As I understand it, all metrics are meaningless this early in the season, which makes me wonder why the NCAA bothered to release numbers right now when they were under no obligation to do so. They should have waited until the new year, when most of the college football bowls are over, and most college basketball teams start conference play. That said, I appreciate all transparency, especially the kind that shows this level of organizational stupidity.

    Enjoy the process, everyone. I can't believe no one in his thread has mentioned the one team in America worth following: Houston Baptist. They beat Fordham and Wake Forest, and lost to Virginia and Wisconsin. This puts them at #147, which is in the top half of today's list of all 353 teams, just ahead of Final Four team Loyola Chicago (#148) and the following power conference teams: Washington State (#155), South Carolina (#162), Utah (#169), Boston College (#170), Baylor (#185), Wake Forest (#205), and California (#246).
    This is the part that baffles me. They did not need to do this now. You would think that the NCAA would have looked at the results and said, "Nope. Not this week."

    I assume they tested NET by running data from prior seasons, and I assume it reflected something close to reality in those tests. These results clearly do not, so why not wait until NET normalizes before releasing it, especially in its first year? I know some already were asking for results before this week, but I think most would understand the simple explanation that the data are not sufficient this early in the season for NET to produce meaningful results.
    Last edited by JetpackJesus; 11-27-2018 at 06:51 PM.

  10. #30
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Quote Originally Posted by fuse View Post
    Nate Silver, if he were wise, would be lauding why human analysis of data analytics is important and justifying his expertise as better than ML/“AI”.
    I was asked via DM to expand what I meant by my comments above.

    Here goes:

    I’m a big believer in data and fact, and have a lot of respect for Nate Silver.

    My main point was really more about flaws in the formula, and that a sharp statistician like Mr. Silver could have used NET as a foil to discuss the differences between data (raw analytics) and information (transforming data into a story).

    It was a bit of a stretch to compare machine learning and artificial intelligence to the blunt tool that is NET (although I would contend NET may make a good case study in inherent bias).

    NET, at best, is just data (or as others have pointed out, it may just be too early for the output of the formula to have any tangible meaning). I’m not sure it will ever produce information.

    A brief aside on data and information.
    An example of data might be, an ostrich lays the biggest bird egg.
    If you’ve never seen an ostrich egg, that data isn’t super meaningful.
    If I know you’ve seen a chicken egg, or assume it is a common enough reference point and add an additional data point, an ostrich egg is equivalent to 24 chicken eggs, now you have information.

    (I resisted temptation to create an example using basketball players and everyone’s favorite unit of measurement.)

    Disclaimer: I’m not a statistician or mathematician, and one of my favorite mantras is “often wrong, never in doubt”.

    With a little luck, maybe someone found this useful or mildly entertaining.

    Let’s Go Duke!

  11. #31
    The NET rankings are starting to look more reasonable/representative (and playing Texas Tech and St John' looks like it will be much better for our SOS than expected pre-season):

    1 Michigan
    2 Virginia
    3 Duke
    4 Texas Tech
    5 Tennessee
    6 Kansas
    7 Gonzaga
    8 Nevada
    9 Michigan St.
    10 Auburn
    11 Wisconsin
    12 Buffalo
    13 Ohio St.
    14 Houston
    15 North Carolina
    16 Nebraska
    17 Oklahoma
    18 NC State-seems a bit high
    19 Louisville-seems a bit high
    20 Indiana Big Ten
    21 San Francisco-high
    22 Marquette
    23 Villanova
    24 Virginia Tech-a little low
    25 Cincinnati
    26 Arizona St.
    27 Mississippi St.-a little low
    28 Furman
    29 Florida St.-a little low
    30 St. John's (NY)
    31 Purdue Big Ten
    32 Syracuse
    33 Kentucky
    34 UCLA
    35 Iowa St.
    36 Utah St.-high
    37 Arizona-high
    38 Liberty-high
    39 LSU
    40 Colorado
    41 Butler
    42 Maryland-probably a little low
    43 Washington
    44 Iowa
    45 Lipscomb
    46 Kansas St.
    47 Northwestern-high
    48 Florida
    49 San Diego-high
    50 North Texas-high

    51-60 include TCU, Minnesota and Creighton, all of whom it's hard to see as behind Northwestern, San Diego and North Texas. But, that's really nit-picking at this point

  12. #32
    Pfftt...State will prove doubters wrong. The NET is just very forward thinking.

  13. #33
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Location
    Durham
    Quote Originally Posted by Nugget View Post
    The NET rankings are starting to look more reasonable/representative (and playing Texas Tech and St John' looks like it will be much better for our SOS than expected pre-season):

    1 Michigan
    2 Virginia
    3 Duke
    4 Texas Tech
    5 Tennessee
    6 Kansas
    7 Gonzaga
    8 Nevada
    9 Michigan St.
    10 Auburn
    11 Wisconsin
    12 Buffalo
    13 Ohio St.
    14 Houston
    15 North Carolina
    16 Nebraska
    17 Oklahoma
    18 NC State-seems a bit high
    19 Louisville-seems a bit high
    20 Indiana Big Ten
    21 San Francisco-high
    22 Marquette
    23 Villanova
    24 Virginia Tech-a little low
    25 Cincinnati
    26 Arizona St.
    27 Mississippi St.-a little low
    28 Furman
    29 Florida St.-a little low
    30 St. John's (NY)
    31 Purdue Big Ten
    32 Syracuse
    33 Kentucky
    34 UCLA
    35 Iowa St.
    36 Utah St.-high
    37 Arizona-high
    38 Liberty-high
    39 LSU
    40 Colorado
    41 Butler
    42 Maryland-probably a little low
    43 Washington
    44 Iowa
    45 Lipscomb
    46 Kansas St.
    47 Northwestern-high
    48 Florida
    49 San Diego-high
    50 North Texas-high

    51-60 include TCU, Minnesota and Creighton, all of whom it's hard to see as behind Northwestern, San Diego and North Texas. But, that's really nit-picking at this point
    it makes sense. I still wouldn't be concerned about outliers until the end of january or so...and was kind of dissapointed that Nate Silver railed on it when to a large degree, the naivete of the rankings were due to a lack of preseason rankings...something that makes rankings look like crap early, but is likely a good thing down the road.

    Now, I'd argue that the NCAA shouldn't have bothered to release them...but such is life.
    1200. DDMF.

  14. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by fuse View Post
    I was asked via DM to expand what I meant by my comments above.

    Here goes:

    I’m a big believer in data and fact, and have a lot of respect for Nate Silver.

    My main point was really more about flaws in the formula, and that a sharp statistician like Mr. Silver could have used NET as a foil to discuss the differences between data (raw analytics) and information (transforming data into a story).

    It was a bit of a stretch to compare machine learning and artificial intelligence to the blunt tool that is NET (although I would contend NET may make a good case study in inherent bias).

    NET, at best, is just data (or as others have pointed out, it may just be too early for the output of the formula to have any tangible meaning). I’m not sure it will ever produce information.

    A brief aside on data and information.
    An example of data might be, an ostrich lays the biggest bird egg.
    If you’ve never seen an ostrich egg, that data isn’t super meaningful.
    If I know you’ve seen a chicken egg, or assume it is a common enough reference point and add an additional data point, an ostrich egg is equivalent to 24 chicken eggs, now you have information.

    (I resisted temptation to create an example using basketball players and everyone’s favorite unit of measurement.)

    Disclaimer: I’m not a statistician or mathematician, and one of my favorite mantras is “often wrong, never in doubt”.

    With a little luck, maybe someone found this useful or mildly entertaining.

    Let’s Go Duke!
    I believe Mr Silver would agree with me here in that humans still play an important (the most important?) role in most ML/AI models, namely in designing/creating the features of the model. AI/ML is not just chucking a ton of data into some black box that figures it all out. Thus the importance of human decisions to, as Jason Evans relayed, cap the win margin at 10. That's a major decision made by a human. I'm not sure what goes into NET vs Nate Silver's models versus Ken Pomeroy's models, but I bet Nate's and Ken's are better...

  15. #35
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    Oct 2009
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    Durham
    Quote Originally Posted by JayZee View Post
    I'm not sure what goes into NET vs Nate Silver's models versus Ken Pomeroy's models, but I bet Nate's and Ken's are better...
    I don't think you'll find disagreement among dorks that the latter 2's models will be better...but they're trying to accomplish different things. Two of them are predictors, one of them is attempting to seed teams both on absolute strength as well as reward for doing certain things that the NCAA likes to see...like winning games. So far as the results aren't as far out of whack as some of the RPI ones were, I'm fine with bumping a team up a seed line or two if they won a bunch of big games, even if they were close, over a team that lost the close games and beat everyone else a bit more.

    So saying "we won't reward you for winning by more than 10" does two things:

    1) it never encourages you to pour it on (though 10 is likely low)
    2) you get more value by playing teams that are closer to you in ranking

    Say I'm being compared to some other team. We both play Cupcake state. Team light blue wins by 15, and we win by 20. The system considers that the same even though there is some amount of predictive value in comparing those results. Now, instead we both play a slightly heavier weight team...like pound cake polytechnic...they win by 7 and we win by 10. Now we look better than they do...and that distinction would have been lost if we had played cupcake.

    So even if it discards some predictive value, it encourages teams to play teams more equal in strength. I have no problem with that. I also have no problem rewarding more than 2 "points" worth of distinction between a 1 point win and a 1 point loss. You want to reward teams for actually winning the game, even if it has less predictive value.

    I'm fine with these things. You should be rewarded for them. This system is getting far more flac than it should.
    1200. DDMF.

  16. #36
    I agree, let's let the NET get same data before we just kill it. It's already not looking nearly as terrible as some have made it out to be an we're still in December.

  17. #37
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    Feb 2016
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    Atlanta
    Quote Originally Posted by uh_no View Post
    I don't think you'll find disagreement among dorks that the latter 2's models will be better...but they're trying to accomplish different things. Two of them are predictors, one of them is attempting to seed teams both on absolute strength as well as reward for doing certain things that the NCAA likes to see...like winning games. So far as the results aren't as far out of whack as some of the RPI ones were, I'm fine with bumping a team up a seed line or two if they won a bunch of big games, even if they were close, over a team that lost the close games and beat everyone else a bit more.

    So saying "we won't reward you for winning by more than 10" does two things:

    1) it never encourages you to pour it on (though 10 is likely low)
    2) you get more value by playing teams that are closer to you in ranking

    Say I'm being compared to some other team. We both play Cupcake state. Team light blue wins by 15, and we win by 20. The system considers that the same even though there is some amount of predictive value in comparing those results. Now, instead we both play a slightly heavier weight team...like pound cake polytechnic...they win by 7 and we win by 10. Now we look better than they do...and that distinction would have been lost if we had played cupcake.

    So even if it discards some predictive value, it encourages teams to play teams more equal in strength. I have no problem with that. I also have no problem rewarding more than 2 "points" worth of distinction between a 1 point win and a 1 point loss. You want to reward teams for actually winning the game, even if it has less predictive value.

    I'm fine with these things. You should be rewarded for them. This system is getting far more flac than it should.
    I'm of the opinion that a 10pt cap is too low. A tight game with lots of fouls down the stretch can end at 8-10 points; that is a far cry different from a game ending 15+ points. I'm thinking 15 might be the magic number for capping.

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by BandAlum83 View Post
    I'm of the opinion that a 10pt cap is too low. A tight game with lots of fouls down the stretch can end at 8-10 points; that is a far cry different from a game ending 15+ points. I'm thinking 15 might be the magic number for capping.
    I'd have a stratified scale...no reason for just two margin categories. If you only have two, I'd move the line to 18 or 20 maybe.

  19. #39
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    Durham
    Quote Originally Posted by BandAlum83 View Post
    I'm of the opinion that a 10pt cap is too low. A tight game with lots of fouls down the stretch can end at 8-10 points; that is a far cry different from a game ending 15+ points. I'm thinking 15 might be the magic number for capping.
    That's fair, though I'm skeptical it will make substantial differences though. How many games will a team play between 10 and 15 points? I wager it's <5 on average. You'll definitely get a change in ranking of 1 or 2, but given the committee has the final say anyway, and it's still within the margin of error for regional balance and other bracketing rules, I'm not sure it will make that much of a difference in the end. At 10 or 15 points, the system SHOULD eliminate the huge outliers that plagued RPI.
    1200. DDMF.

  20. #40
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Quote Originally Posted by UrinalCake View Post
    Google claims that AI algorithms are used in the formula. Maybe our robot overlords have seen the future and this is what it holds. Could someone call John Connor? Seriously, this poll is nonsensical. If there’s insufficient data to apply the formula then they should wait another month before releasing it.
    Quote Originally Posted by uh_no View Post
    it makes sense. I still wouldn't be concerned about outliers until the end of january or so...and was kind of dissapointed that Nate Silver railed on it when to a large degree, the naivete of the rankings were due to a lack of preseason rankings...something that makes rankings look like crap early, but is likely a good thing down the road.

    Now, I'd argue that the NCAA shouldn't have bothered to release them...but such is life.
    I'd agree if PR for the NCAA were high on my list of concerns, but I like watching rankings "take shape" as more data is accrued and wouldn't have minded if the NCAA had released NET in early November after *1* game had been played by each team. Even releasing it in late November as they did probably has been instructive about the power of sample size.

    Anyway, I hope the NCAA releases the formula behind NET at some point but am not very hopeful on that count.

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