Brian writes:
>college hky gets little ink in my home area. I, too, put little emphasis
>on computer ratings (not that sportswriter polls are
>that great either) and I think the Union analogy is, to an extent, quite
>appropriate in pointing out what discrepencies might occur in some comp.
>ratings. I happen to agree with what Croce wrote (in that respect).
 
I almost let this go by, but it can't be left alone.  Brian, the Union
analogy is completely inappropriate as far as Croce used it!  To remind
everyone, he said Union beat Dartmouth which beat RPI which beat BU which
beat Maine, therefore Union is better than Maine.  Of course, he is so far
off the mark, it's even worse than the garbage he printed the first time.
 
1) If these were the only games played, then yes, this is likely how TCHCR
  would order the teams (Union higher than Maine).  But these are only four
  of 426 results right now!  And as the season goes on, things even out,
  such that if this happened on the first day of the season, it sure isn't
  going to be how the teams would be ranked now.  That's one of the reasons
  TCHCR isn't released early in the season.
 
2) As you go farther and farther down the connections, results of a third
  team have less and less of an effect on a team's rating.  This is another
  beauty of TCHCR.  It is true that this is a possible connection between
  Union and Maine, but it's far from a direct connection, so Maine's results
  actually have very little of an effect on Union as far as this connection
  goes.  Now, Union played Merrimack which played Maine twice, so through
  *that* connection, the Maine results would be stronger.  And since Maine
  pounded Merrimack twice, and Merrimack beat Union by three at home, you
  sure can't come up with a situation through this more direct connection
  that says Union is better than Maine.  It is a huge collection of more
  direct connections like this one (where Union fares worse than Maine) that
  outweighs the small number of connections like the one above, and THAT is
  why Union is ranked so far below Maine.
 
Of course, Croce was trying to continue to make a mockery of TCHCR, so he
chose this particular connection to make the readers think, "Gee, any rating
that considers things like this must be out of whack."  And this came after
he was provided with an explanation by Keith as to why results of other
games can affect a team's rating in TCHCR!  He took this explanation and
twisted it to fit his own selfish purposes.  This is deplorable.
 
Remember, the graph is modeled on an electrical network.  I'm not an EE,
but my understanding is that current wants to dissipate throughout the
entire circuit and all connections so that it reaches a stable state of
being about the same everywhere.  There are known laws of physics that can
explain this.  TCHCR's graph is almost identical, such that various seemingly
strange contradictions in connections (like Croce's and mine above) end up
being reconciled, just like electrical networks which can start out with
currents opposing each other in certain places.
 
Believe it or not, this very situation is one of the things considered by
the NC$$ selection committee.  It looks at your opponents, and your
opponents' opponents, in determining strength of schedule.  And it is very
likely that in some situations, discrepancies like this will occur among
teams fighting for, say, the last seed - and the committee has to somehow
reconcile the differences.  Would Croce like to barbecue the selection
committee, too?
 
BTW, my father is not a hockey or even a sports fan (no milkman jokes :-)),
but he's a pretty smart guy (EE) and easily understands TCHCR although he
doesn't have an opinion on it one way or the other.  Just to find out his
reaction, I gave him copies of 1) Croce's 1st article, 2) Keith's reply
which was faxed to Croce, and 3) Croce's 2nd article.  After reading them,
he said it seemed to him that after reading Keith's letter, Croce may have
realized that TCHCR did have some validity, but he did not want to print
anything that might either contradict what he said earlier or make his own
poll look bad.  Thus the 2nd article - which, my father correctly pointed
out, actually said nothing and didn't have to be written at all.  I tend to
think a guy secure in his belief that TCHCR is rubbish would simply toss
any mail he got on the subject and not bother with a followup.  Think about
that one for a while.
 
>To answer Dave Smith's charges, the Times-Union is one of the top
>paper's in NY state (the NYTimes obviously notwithstanding). To
>insinuate that the paper is lowsy because you disagree with one
>writer, is quite judgemental of you. It is similar to Croce's
>generalization about computer users. Shame on you.
 
I think Dave's original statement two weeks ago was that he believed the
Times-Union was lousy ANYWAY, and that this was just another example of
what he didn't like about it.  But whether you revere the paper or use it
to line Tweety's cage, it is irresponsible and ill-served to allow a
reporter to attack someone in print and then refuse the person attacked
an opportunity to give his/her side of the story, as Keith tried to do.
 
>As far as the trivial part goes, I had many of you tell me that my
>discussion with Mike on the Clarkson-UNH game and subsequent rankings
>were trivial as well. Sounds like hypocrisy to me.
 
The point in that situation was that you and I were dragging out the
discussion on the list for a week and turning it into a private conversation
that should have been held via email.  It was trivial because it didn't
interest more than a few people on the list.  The reaction to each of the
articles written by Croce and posted here clearly shows that many people
are interested.
 
By the way, who is treating it more trivially: someone like you or me who
writes a reply and then goes back to work, or Croce who writes such an
article *for a living*?  Voila - there is your hypocrisy.
 
Supposedly Bob is a nice guy despite what we've seen, and I'm not going to
attack the guy's character other than what he has demonstrated in his
articles; still, I wouldn't mind a chance to debate him on the subject of
ratings and polls.  But I'm not going to turn blue from holding my breath.
 
 
- mike
 
PS so much for me ignoring him.  Maybe after this. :-)