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
strictly those of:
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86 and '95 DJF 5/27/94
LET'S GO RED!! JCF 12/2/97
"I'm going to watch the football game here on the telly."
"Oh, but I just heard the end of that game on the radio and--"
"That's fine, love, but don't tell me about it, just let me watch it, please."
"But I know the score of the game."
"That's fine, but just don't tell me."
"But I know who won!"
"Look, JUST DON'T TELL ME!"
"Oh, all right, watch your old game. But you won't see any goals!"
-- Benny Hill
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