At 11:53 PM 3/7/96, Kurt Stutt wrote:
>Don't get me wrong, I was not presenting this as a be-all, end-all of
>ratings.  I just thought it was interesting to look at.
...
>However, I've gotten quite a bit of email from people saying "yeah, I
>expected those teams to be there," so there may well be some validity
>to this.
 
This was what I found most interesting about the analysis.  If you asked me
to list the teams I considered to be over/underachievers this year, the
lists Kurt came up with would have closely matched my selections.
 
That doesn't mean it is perfect, as Kurt says.  Yet, I think some of the
best analyses or stats are the ones that confirm what you think you already
know.  But here, it is important to note that as Kurt and Dave have pointed
out, some things can skew the results.
 
>I also don't think this is necessarily a good predictor of the
>playoffs.  More a look towards next year.
 
I agree on it not necessarily being a playoff predictor, but as for next
year, I'd have to see more to know if I thought it was useful in that
regard.  Such as, in the past, how have the teams on the lists tended to do
in the following year?  I'm not asking Kurt or anyone to find out, just
saying that this is something that we'd have to know before considering it
a decent predictor of the following season.
 
I would think that it might not necessarily be a good predictor of next
season because of the turnover in players and other factors that might
change and which caused teams to over/underachieve.  Also, some teams may
be permanent overachievers and some may be permanent underachievers.  And
that may tell us something in itself, too.
 
Anyway, it might be something to file away and pull out next year to see
how those teams did.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
>> Co-owner of the College Hockey Lists at University of Maine System  <<
*****       Unofficial Merrimack Hockey home page located at:       *****
*****   http://www.tiac.net/users/machnik/MChockey/MChockey.html    *****
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.