On Mar 17,  9:09, Adam Wodon wrote:
> Is this a cruel joke, or a plot to drive me insane?
 
Damn, he's on to us :-)
 
>> How about things like strength of schdule? No disrespect to the ECAC
>but their
>> conference (from top to bottom) is not as strong as other conferences.
>Yale
>> and Clarkson beat up on quite a few of the weaker teams.
>
>This I would say, is absolute hooey ... maybe that's just opinion,
>because I haven't crunched the numbers on it ... but the 10th place ECAC
>team is usually stronger than the other conference's weakest teams ...
>and I'd say the same for 9th and 8th place too.  The ECAC has no real
>national powerhouse contenders -- though someone could surprise -- but
>top to bottom, it's quite strong.
 
I don't know the One True Way to assess relative conference strength.  A few
years ago, I did a worksheet which took the RPICH rating of each team in a
conference, calculated the mean RPI, and then calculated the standard
deviation. The mean RPI was meant to show the conference's relative strength,
while the standard deviation would show the disparity within a conference
between the haves and have-nots.  As I recall, the ECAC had both the lowest
mean RPI and the highest standard deviation, which might indicate that they
were the weakest conference and had some exceptionally weak teams as well.  I
won't swear that the interpretation is correct, as it's been a dog's age since
I've dealt with probability and statistical theory.
 
One surprising thing that did come out of all that was that, at the time, the
CCHA had almost as high a standard deviation as the ECAC, so they seemed to
have their share of weak sisters as well.  This was back when Kent and
Illinois-Chicago were in the league.
 
Perhaps it would be interesting to see a similar calculation done with this
year's RPI, or whatever stat(s) would be appropriate.
 
--
Disclaimer -- Unless otherwise noted, all opinions expressed above are
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Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86 and '95                                             DJF  5/27/94
LET'S GO RED!!                                                  JCF  12/2/97
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-- Benny Hill
 
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